SG court upholds arbitral ruling favoring ousted Solaire manager

SOLAIRE Resort and Casino RICHARD REYES

The Singaporean High Court dismissed a petition filed by the Bloomberry group against Global Gaming Philippines LLC, which was accused of committing fraud and misrepresentation leading to its ouster as management firm for Solaire Resort Manila in 2013.

Global Gaming is a unit of Las Vegas-based Global Gaming Asset Management.

This effectively upheld a 2016 ruling by the Singaporean Arbitration Tribunal which declared the ouster wrongful and also upheld GGAM’s claim to an 8.7 percent stake in Solaire Resort owner and developer Bloomberry Resorts Corp.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Monday, Bloomberry said its subsidiaries Sureste Properties Inc. (SPI) and Bloomberry Resorts & Hotels Inc. (BRHI) had received a decision from the Singapore High Court dated January 3 dismissing their petition to vacate and oppose the enforcement of the partial award issued by the Singapore Arbitration Tribunal dated Sept. 20, 2016.

In contesting the partial award given by the arbitration court at Singapore’s High Court, SPI and BRHI invoked the U.S. Department of Justice’s issue with Las Vegas Sands (LVS) and the U.S. SEC order on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) involving GGAM officials William Weidner and Eric Chiu while they were officials at Las Vegas Sands.

SPI and BRHI deemed FCPA findings as “new evidence” of GGAM’s alleged procedural fraud, arguing that this should be a legal ground for setting side the partial award issued by the arbitration court in 2016.

In its Jan. 3 ruling, however, Singapore’s High Court said that the FCPA findings “do not constitute strong and cogent evidence of any species of fraud” against GGAM.
SPI and BRHI have until February 3, 2020 to appeal this decision to a higher court in Singapore.

For its part, the Bloomberry units intend to appeal the ruling, with focus on the “flaws and the misappreciation of the evidence in the decision,” the disclosure said.