De Niro, Packer casino bill approved in Barbuda

The nation’s government approved the so-called Paradise Found bill, according to a report from the Guardian. The bill gives them certain incentives to build the casino-resort, which includes a 25-year tax holiday. The government has been worried that the project could be abandoned, which was the motivation for passing the bill to provide more incentives for Packer and De Niro to build the complex. The country wants to bring in more celebrity investments.

The casino will be at the 251-acre site of the The K Club Hotel, which closed in 2004. The proposed project also includes a new airport.

De Niro and Packer are already partners in De Niro’s restaurant and hotel company, Nobu, according to the Australian Business Review. Packer recently bought a 20-percent stake.

In addition to recently opening a new casino in Macau, Packer is also working toward a casino in Las Vegas, which would be his first property in Sin City. Packer, owner of Australia’s Crown Resorts, last year paid $260 million for a controlling stake in land that once hosted the New Frontier Hotel & Casino. The site is located across from Wynn Las Vegas.

Caribbean mega-resort opposed by island residents

Opponents accuse the island’s government of trampling citizens’ rights in a rush to push the project through. The passage last week of the so-called Paradise Found bill during a lively session of the Antigua and Barbuda parliament cleared a major hurdle to the $250m development on the site of the run-down and abandoned K Club, which closed in 2004.

The new law gives the celebrity business partners incentives including a 25-year tax holiday in return for building the exclusive beachfront resort, which features an eco-lodge and yacht marina, and a new airport on Barbuda.

But critics say the law – named for the De Niro-Packer partnership’s resort brand and passed within hours of its first reading – will “wipe out” sections of existing legislation.

Among the provisions stripped by the new law, they say, are the right of the elected Barbuda Council to “consider and approve” large-scale property deals on the island, and the population’s shared ownership of its land. Plans for the resort, which include more than 40 upmarket cottages each with a private pool, call for the grant of a government lease for 140 acres in addition to the 251-acre footprint of the old K Club site.

“What the government is doing and the way they are proceeding is wrong,” said opposition leader Harold Lovell, whose fellow senators from the United Progressive Party voted against the bill.

A year ago, the Antigua and Barbuda prime minister Gaston Browne hailed De Niro as “a visionary” for his work in hotel development, including a Macau casino project with fellow Hollywood big-hitters Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese. He named the actor a “special economic envoy” in the hope of attracting more celebrity investment to the country.

But progress has been slow since, and a referendum on the island in March that approved the project by a narrow majority is facing a legal challenge by the Barbuda People’s Movement (BPM), which claims the result was illegitimate because non-Barbudans were allowed to vote.

Browne, fearful that De Niro and Packer might walk away from the investment in frustration at what he called “stymieing” by the opposition, said the government was merely acting decisively to get the project back on track.

“We did what we had to do. We went the extra mile to get the project out of political deadlock and get it moving. If they’re going to protest with the hope that we lose the investment they’ll have to account to the people of Antigua and Barbuda,” he said.

Browne said the project would bring a huge financial windfall for the country and generate hundreds of jobs to an island that has struggled economically. An advance payment of $1.85m from the De Niro partnership after the vote in March helped to clear a 20-week wage backlog for 600 Barbuda Council workers.