Nepal: Casinos to clear dues in 35 days

The government still has to recover us$ 2.6 million from five casinos — Casino Anna, Casino Royal, Casino Shangrila, Casino Nepal and Casino Fulbari. It has recovered us$ 1,054,540 from some of the casinos after a massive crackdown. It is common knowledge that casinos have been entertaining the Nepalis in blatant violation of the law.

“The casinos have not been following the law of the land and entertaining the Nepalis,” said PAC secretary Som Bahadur Thapa. PAC has directed the government to revoke the licence of casinos if they are found entertaining Nepalis.

The committee also blamed the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation — that issues the licence to the Casinos — for laxity in monitoring the casinos. Not only the casinos, the ministry has also been blamed for not monitoring whether 475 hotels licensed by are obeying the law or not.

“Casinos’ licences have been renewed repeatedly without proper regulation,” PAC observed, directing the ministry not to issue new licences without framing the rules. As hotels are issued licences to operate casinos, there is still a confusion over who is liable to pay tax if the casinos don’t pay.

Nepal’s casino industry is considered the oldest in South Asia but lately it has been in news for all the wrong reasons like tax evasion and entertaining Nepalis.

According to the ministry, the country has 10 casinos; Casino Royale (Hotel & Yeti), Casino Venus (Hotel Malla), Casino Rad (Hotel Radisson), Casino Grande (Hotel Pokhara Grande), Fulbari Casino (Hotel Fulbari), Casino Nepal (Hotel Soaltee), Casino Anna (Hotel De’l Annapurna), Casino Everest (Hotel Everest), Casino Tara (Hotel Hyatt) and Casino Shangrila (Hotel Shangrila).

PAC was told that 10 five-star hotels have applied for licence renewal. Two four-star hotels, 24 three-star hotels, 45 two-star hotels, 36 one-start hotels, 358 tourist standard hotels have already been issued licences.

The ministry recently issued licence to operate mini-casinos at Hotel Vaishali (Thamel), Hotel Ratna (Biratnagar), Hotel Grande (Pokhara) and Hotel Sneha (Nepalgunj) with a view to woo tourists and generate employment.