The owners of the Naga Floating Casino in Phnom Penh have signed a deal to build a $100 million hotel, resort and gambling complex on the riverbank near Hun Sen Park, about 500 meters from the seven-story casino boat.
The new complex, to be called the Nexus Naga, will feature a 750-room five-star hotel, a nightclub, a shopping arcade, restaurants, a ballroom and a fitness center.
According to reports in The Star, a Malaysian newspaper, it will also include 40 gambling “modules” or areas. Company officials would not provide any details about gambling facilities Tuesday.
But according to a fact sheet released by Ariston Sdn Bhd, Naga’s Malaysia-based corporate parent, “The new complex is positioned as one of the finest hotel-casino complex[es] in this part of the world.”
The fact sheet says the complex “hopes to emulate the success’’ of such well-known gambling resorts as Genting Highland Resort in Malaysia. It is expected to open around January 2002.
Sok Leakna, deputy chief of the Phnom Penh municipal cabinet, said Khov Chuly Development Ltd transferred the site to Naga officials more than a month ago.
“I don’t know what Naga plans to build,’’ he said, but the contract specifies a hotel.
Construction is slated to begin next month.
The deal marks a sharp departure from previous government policy regarding casinos. In late 1998, the government banned casinos in Phnom Penh in an attempt to curb a yearlong wave of kidnappings.
The Council of Ministers ordered more than 35 casinos then operating in Phnom Penh to shut down immediately. Two of them—Naga and the Holiday International Casino—were given a six-month grace period to relocate at least 200 km outside of Phnom Penh.
Holiday moved to Sihanoukville, but Naga went to court, arguing the government had signed a 20-year contract in 1995 with Ariston, promising it the sole right to run gambling facilities in Cambodia in exchange for some $1.3 billion in development projects.
Ariston won its court case, and Naga has been allowed to operate in Phnom Penh ever since.
Neither Minister of Cabinet Sok An nor Council of Ministers spokesman Khieu Thavika could be reached for comment Tuesday.
But one official close to the situation said Naga was only allowed to continue operating as a casino because it was a temporary facility, floating on the river, rather than a permanent building on dry land.
“But if they create a hotel and put a gambling casino in it, it is illegal and contradicts [Prime Minister Hun Sen’s] order that all gambling stay 200 km away from Phnom Penh,’’ the official said.
“It is absolutely impossible if they put the casino in the hotel.’’
Ariston has had a sometimes stormy relationship with Cambodian authorities. In 1996, government officials accused Ariston of dragging its feet on a package of big-ticket projects in Sihanoukville, including a $60 million airport expansion, a $75 million island resort and a $30 million golf resort.
Ariston blamed the government for holding up work by delaying permits and failing to sign leases. In February 1997, Ariston criticized the government for failing to honor the 1995 contract giving it exclusive rights to run gambling in Cambodia.
Ariston officials claimed then that more than 35 casinos were operating in Phnom Penh alone, cutting Ariston’s expected profits by nearly 50 percent.
In August of 1998, the Council of Ministers canceled part of Ariston’s Sihanoukville package, agreeing to seek additional bids for expanding Sihanoukville’s power plant on the grounds no work had been done.
But relations took a turn for the better a year later, when Hun Sen, Sok An and their families were guests of Ariston officials for three days at the posh Nexus Resort Karambunai, an Ariston-owned golf resort in Malaysia.
