Autor: Investigative Network Albania Newsroom
On Wednesday, June 23, around noon at the MAK Hotel Tirana (former Sheraton) an inauguration ceremony took place quietly. It was the opening of the newest casino in Tirana. Named Royal Eagle Casino, this is the third casino in Albania and the second to open in less than a year.
“I am convinced that with the staff we have trained here at Royal Eagle Casino we will repeat the success achieved at Grand Casino Tirana,” said Petr Kulhánek, general manager, in front of the guests at the ceremony.
Less than three years have passed since the Albanian government declared war on gambling due to the frightening spread, but also the deep criminalization of this industry. But those times already seem very distant.
Tirana is rapidly becoming one of the largest gambling centers in the Balkans. Silently, casinos are rapidly sprouting one after the other as the market is dubiously monopolized. Not to the well-known international companies of this sector, nor to the global hotel brands that would bring investments in tourism as justified by the law by the government in 2019. The new gambling market is going back into the hands of the old bosses, who by exploiting deliberate legal vacuums, returned on business through the back door.
License Boom
Until a year ago, Albania had only one casino. Located near the center of Tirana, in the building known as Taiwan, the license for Regency International Casino Tirana was granted by the government of Fatos Nano in April 2005.
But on May 19 last year, the Gambling Oversight Agency (GOA) approved the licence for another casino located in the Plaza Maritim hotel. Grand Casino Tirana was the first casino in a 5-star hotel in Albania according to the law. But the beneficiary of the license was not the Plaza hotel, nor the Maritim Group. The applicant and beneficiary of the 10-year casino license was Adria Entertainment.
License for exercising the activity “gambling” for Adria Entertainment sh.a.
That was all it took and the licensing game reopened. In June 2020, the government renewed the license for the Taiwan casino, which is owned by Skënder Sulaj and Avni Braçaj. The license of this casino expired at the end of June 2020, but was renewed for another 10 years.
And on April 15 of this year, the license for the third casino was given, this time in Mak Hotel Tirana, former Sheraton. Even this time the beneficiary of the license is not the hotel. The beneficiary company of the license is Infinity Investment. Even this is 100% owned by the former owners of Apex, Bledar Sinani and the Austrian Johannes Weissengruber. The latter controls shares in Albanian casinos through a private foundation located in Linz, Austria called the Tannbach Castle Revival Foundation.
Extract from the register of the Foundation “Revival of Tannbach Castle”, which owns part of the interests of casinos in Tirana. This foundation 100% controls the companies APEX Holding GmbH and APEX Invest GmbH, companies with interests in other gambling companies registered in Austria and throughout Europe.
Within 1 year three casino licenses. And yet, the wave of gambling flourishing does not stop here. The Gambling Oversight Authority is in the process of considering another casino license in Tirana, in a 5-star hotel and two other licenses for a casino in Vlora. Applicant for one of the Vlora licenses is an Albanian group with strong financial ties and interests in Mexico. Asked about the number of applications still awaiting evaluation and approval by this institution, the GOA declined to comment.
“What is happening is nonsense. In the center of Tirana very soon there will be more casinos than in all the centers of other capitals of the region. The law of 2019 to discipline the problematic gambling market in Albania is practically devastated,”an official of the Ministry of Finance told INA on condition of anonymity.
Return of the APEX boys
Usually, inaugurations of this kind are accompanied by mundane ceremonies and mass publicity. But in the case of the new casino everything was done quietly. Apparently, those who are taking over the gambling market in Albania do not want to be exposed to publicity. But who is behind the renaissance of gambling in Tirana?
Investigative Network Albania researched the entire chain of open companies in Albania, Austria and the Czech Republic to capture the gambling business in Albania. Exclusive documents provided suggest that the ultimate beneficiaries of the market are again its old bosses, more precisely those who in the gambling world are known as The APEX boys.
The owner of Royal Eagle Casino, which opened in the former Sheraton is the company Infinity Investments. This company is owned by WSI and W-CZ Holdings, which have 60 percent and 40 percent of the shares, respectively.
Licensing of Infinity Investment sh.a. for “gambling” activity
WSI is an Albanian company owned by Bledar Sinani, otherwise known as Dari of APEX. W-CZ Holdings is a company registered on September 26, 2019, in Litvínovice, Czech Republic with the representative of an Austrian citizen named Johannes Weissengruber. Both, Sinani and Weissengruber were the majority partners in the former company APEX, which owned the largest share in the gambling market in Albania, before the government banned gambling in 2019.
Network of APEX companies in which Johannes Weissengruber has interests / Source of registration-firem.kurzy.cz
But it does not end here. Sinani and Weissengruber through their companies own 84 percent of the shares in another casino in Tirana, called Grand Casino Tirana, which opened a year ago at Hotel Plaza Maritim. The remaining 16 percent is owned by Kastriot Ndoja, also a former partner of APEX. In fact, Adria Entertainment, the company with the license of the Plaza casino is the former APEX, it has simply changed its name, while the partners are the same. This company in the period 2015-2018, according to official balance sheets in the National Business Record, has earned 44 million dollars, practically 11 million dollars a year. This is a market with colossal profits, so the interest rates are very high.
It is no coincidence that after the law banning gambling in 2019, the Albanian government has issued two licenses for casinos in Tirana, and both licenses ended up in the same hand, to the owners of the former company APEX.
Casino Plaza was licensed without legal basis
The law restricting gambling was passed by the majority in 2015, leaving two years to close the vast majority. But after many dubious delays and amendments dictated by interest groups, the law came into full force on January 1, 2019. With the law in force, electronic casinos, sports betting and the vast majority of gambling were banned, only 3 categories were allowed. They were the national lottery, TV bingo and casinos in 5-star brand hotels.
The first two did not have a significant weight in the gambling market, so with the closure of sports betting and electronic casinos, the most targeted category was that of casinos. The law gave the Gaming Supervision Authority the right to review and approve 10-year casino licenses, but only after the government had determined by a special decision the criteria and procedures for licensing.
More specifically, Article 36 of the law explicitly states: The decision of the Council of Ministers determines the procedures for the competition, additional criteria for applicants competing to obtain a license for the category “Casino”, the procedure for announcing the winner, as well as revocation cases or suspension of this license.”
The government decision took a long time to come out. “The decision to determine the procedure and criteria of the competition was revoked three times in the Council of Ministers, because there were problems,” a former senior government official told INA. But those with interests could not wait.
On May 19 last year, the GOA licensed Grand Casino Tirana even though the government’s decision setting out the criteria and conditions for granting the license had not been issued. In fact, the decision came out only in September last year, 4 months after the licensing of the Plaza hotel. The documents clearly show that the GSA licensed the Grand Casino at the Plaza Hotel without a legal basis. INA addressed questions to the GOA on the legal basis used to determine the criteria and procedures for evaluating the application, but the latter, until the publication of this article has not commented.
How the will of the law was distorted
At the end of 2018, Prime Minister Edi Rama seemed very blunt when he declared that his government would put an end to gambling stupidity. “Casinos will only be in 5-star structures. We have not exercised massively and we will not exercise massively. In 5-star hotels it is legal. But 5 stars with brands not like I put the name “EdiZahoLinda” and put 5 stars on it. “Only international brands receive licenses for casinos,” said Prime Minister Edi Rama.
According to the government, allowing casinos in hotels was dictated by the need to attract investment in tourism. A huge fiscal favor was even given for this, as the 10-year license fee for 5-star casinos was reduced from $ 10 million which they had to pay to only around $ 700,000.
In accordance with the purpose stated by the government, the law also defined what would be called a 5-star hotel, which had the right to obtain a casino license. The relevant article was formulated: “5-star hotels are hotels, which have received the accreditation certificate for this classification from international accreditation institutions and which are holders of a registered trademark, certified and internationally recognized brand name.”
But even this filter could not stop the distortion of the will of the law. Once the law was passed, the existing hotels in Tirana began to sign cooperation contracts with well-known international brands, only to have the right to be classified as hotels where casinos could be opened. Not only that, but the law left it undefined who obtained the license of the casino, hotel or other entities that could enter into a lease agreement with the hotel.
These two elements brought the old players back into the game. If hotel casinos were allowed and justified by the government in order to attract foreign investment in tourism from well-known international hotel groups what happened was quite different. The existing hotels in Tirana, on the one hand entered into management contracts with foreign brands only to qualify as places where casinos could be opened, and on the other hand brought back the old gambling bosses by renting them their halls to open casinos.
As a result, Albania not only did not benefit from investments in tourism from well-known international hotel brands, but again monopolized the market to the old gambling bosses. Those whom the government once called problematic characters. And the whole war that the government declared against gambling in 2019 had only one consequence. Now the old gambling bosses are getting the licenses of the casinos in the center of Tirana for free. Only 7 million ALL per year (around $700.00). Almost the same as the license fee of a retail gas station.
Ky shkrim është pjesë e projektit që mbështetet financiarisht nga Zyra e Mardhënieve me Publikun e Ambasadës së SH.B.A. në Tiranë. Opinionet, gjetjet, konkluzionet dhe rekomandimet e shprehura janë te autor-it/ve dhe nuk përfaqesojnë domosdoshmërisht ato të Departamentit të Shtetit. / This article is part of a project that is financially supported by the Public Relations Office of the US Embassy in Tirana. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Department of State.