Ho: Casino will create thousands of jobs
On June 8, Melco Resorts & Entertainment will put shovels in the ground at the site of a future integrated resort in the coastal city of Limassol, in the Greek republic of Cyprus. City of Dreams Mediterranean, scheduled to open sometime in 2021, will be the first casino resort in Cyprus and one of the largest in the world.
Melco Chairman and CEO Lawrence Ho told Cypriot reporters visiting Macau that a temporary facility “is due to open this summer.” Ho says the revenue generated by the casino, estimated to bring in an additional 300,000 tourists a year, is expected to 4 percent of Cyprus’s gross domestic product, reported the Cyprus Mail.
“We are very happy and fortunate that we won the competitive bid for the license in Cyprus,” he said.
The project is expected to cost €550 million (US$648 million) and create approximately 4,000 temporary jobs during the construction phase. When it is fully operational, the casino is expected to generate approximately 4,500 direct and indirect full time jobs.
City of Dreams Mediterranean is 25 percent –owned by Melco’s local partner, Cyprus Phasouri (Zakaki) Ltd.
“We have exciting times ahead,” Ho said. “And in two and a half years, the permanent integrated resort will open.”
Geoffrey Davis, chief financial officer of Melco International, told GGRAsia that City of Dreams Mediterranean “will showcase our ability to customize our integrated resort development in a way that makes the integrated resort appropriate for the individual market.”
The Melco-led consortium has a 30-year casino license from the Republic of Cyprus. The initial single license also allows the holder to build a satellite casino and three slot parlors in Nicosia, Larnaca, Famagusta and Paphos.
Earlier this month, Melco International announced the appointment of Craig Ballantyne as property president of City of Dreams Mediterranean. Ballantyne will oversee the resort’s daily operations, the Mail reported.
Elsewhere in Cyprus, in the Turkish-controlled northern third of the Mediterranean island, prosecutors are investigating 13 casinos suspected of illegal betting and money laundering. Prosecutors in the city of Gaziantep confiscated $100 million linked to suspects after an earlier investigation by the Board of Investigation on Financial Crimes discovered the casinos were transferring large amounts of foreign currency.
According to the Daily Sabah, the suspects had multiple accounts in seven Turkish banks, including Bank Asya, a lender closed by authorities due to its links to the Gülenist terror group.
Imperial Pacific: Tough to Find Workers
Hong Kong-listed Imperial Pacific International, operator of the sole casino resort on the Pacific island of Saipan, is struggling to find enough U.S. workers to complete the IR.
License requires 65 percent U.S. employees
Imperial Pacific International, operator of the Imperial Pacific Resort on the Pacific island of Saipan, is finding it hard to meet the hiring quota specified in its casino license. According to Inside Asian Gaming, the operator is required to hire 65 percent of workers from the United States.
According to IPI’s Vice President of Human Resources Bertha Leon Guerrero to the Commonwealth Casino Commission, the company had 1,468 active employees in April, 44 percent of whom were U.S. citizens.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is opening just 4,999 foreign worker slots to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in 2019, considerably fewer than the number of applications it has received, with successful candidates decided by lottery. There has also been talk that the program could be shut down completely after 2019.
According to Leon Guerrero, one of the biggest problems for IPI has been keeping the foreign workers it already has due to uncertainty over their futures. Some have resigned.
“For the ones that have resigned willingly, the majority of their concerns is just the uncertainty of the CW1 program.”
IPI is set to request a further extension to the deadline Imperial Pacific Resort following a series of controversies surrounding the use of 2,000 illegal workers by its former contractors MCC, Beleida and Gold Mantis.
The company subsequently hired Pacific Rim to help repopulate its workforce but progress has been slower than expected. Under IPI’s Casino License Agreement, Imperial Pacific Resort must complete a minimum of 329 hotel rooms, 14,140 square meters of gaming area and other elements by no later than 31 August 2018.
Addressing the Commonwealth Casino Commission earlier this month, Leon Guerrero said that, “If we don’t have enough staffing and if we can’t open 10 tables, then we only open seven. It’s a lot of trying to make sure that we continue our operations based on what we have.”
