By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS,
Kathmandu : A chartered accountant from New Delhi, who after building a casino empire in Sri Lanka and then losing it seemed poised for a repeat history in Nepal, has been handed a reprieve by the republic’s apex court.
New Delhi businessman Rakesh Wadhwa, whose control over eight casinos in Nepal decreased to just four in two years and even those threatened to slip out of his grasp, can now heave a sigh of relief. The Supreme Court of Nepal has ordered the government not to scrap the Indian’s licence to run casinos.
The stay order came Monday after the government announced that it was scrapping the licence given to Wadhwa’s Nepal Recreation Center to run four casinos. These have chalked up about NRS 500 million in unpaid royalty to the government and salaries to staff and the Center failed to clear them within the seven-day deadline given by the government.
Despite pressure from the trade unions in the casinos, the Center finally mustered enough courage to go to court and challenged the decision of the tourism and civil aviation ministry to revoke its licence.
The Center says it was licenced by the industry ministry; therefore the tourism ministry doesn’t have any power to cancel its licence.
The Center had sought earlier to file a case in court but withdrew it under pressure from the trade unions.
The Supreme Court has called both the Center and the tourism ministry for negotiations July 11.
Rakesh Wadhwa earned the uneasy reputation of wresting away most of Nepal’s 10 casinos from under the control of his former mentor and partner, maverick American entrepreneur Richard Tuttle, through a protracted and complicated court battle that took place in Hong Kong.
The 54-year-old, whose casinos are said to have stopped paying staff salaries since almost six months, had to exit Nepal clandestinely last year after speculation that he would be arrested.
The ebb in Wadhwa’s fortunes started after a change in Nepal’s political scenario, when the Maoist government sympathetic to him was replaced by a communist-led alliance in 2009, triggering a state crackdown on the casinos.
Subsequently, some of Wadhwa’s casinos were wrested away by people with friends in high places, like former king Gyanendra’s son-in-law Raj Bahadur Singh.
This month, the government also began the process to auction two properties belonging to the Center in a bid to recover the unpaid royalties.
Gambling is banned for Nepalis but the casinos have been consistently flouting the rule, leading to frequent police raids and arrest of Nepali gamblers.