A 27 million pounds player is suing Park Lane Club in London for 244000 pounds as unpaid VIP-rewards.

11:26 / 03.12.2020 1304 views
A 27 million pounds player is suing Park Lane Club in London for 244000 pounds as unpaid VIP-rewards.

A famous player who bet 27 million pounds (35 million dollars) on the roulette tables at an exclusive casino in London for private customers, before getting a “small” profit, sues the casino for cashback.

In the lawsuit lodged in the High Court in London, Croat Juste Puharic claims that he was promised a complimentary VIP-bonus in the amount of 0.9% from the Park Lane Club in the fashionable Mayfair district in the city.

After spending five days of gambling in the club, in May 2015 Puharic left 1.5 million pounds sterling (2 million dollars). But the promised 243518 pounds sterling (323000 dollars) – 0.9% commission on bets in the total amount of 27057621 pounds were not materialised.

In the lawsuit, Puharic claims that he would not risk such a large amount of money if he wouldn’t expect to get a cashback. He says he has a “contractual right” to receive the cash.

But the casino denies that it formally offered Puharic such an incentive to play and states that he was “not particularly interested” in whether there would be a reward in the end.

Who actually owns the Park Lane Club?

The lawsuit limits several bad days for the park Lane Club and its owner, Silverbond Enterprises Ltd., who had the gambling licence revoked by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC), last Wednesday.

The regulator stated that it revoked the licence due to “the change in corporate oversight”.

It is believed that Silverbond is owned or was in the ownership of Vasilis Melniks who is accused of embezzlement and laundering of 54 million euro (64 million US dollars) from the Ukranian state generating company.

According to the public data, Melniks, the citizen of Latvia, resigned director`s post Silverbond in October 2018. This happened not long after the Ukranian court froze the assets of the businessman in the country. It led to a review of the company’s licence on casino from UKGC.

His replacement on Silverbond directorial board became the Italian banker Riccardo Tattoni.But in its resolution, the UKGC supposed that the issue of proprietary right on the casino still remains questionable.

The regulatory body stated that it cannot be satisfied toward the “source of the funds used to purchase and maintain the licence during the shift of the corporate oversight or the one who will be paid out of future licensee`s profits.”

In 2018, the UKGC fined the Park Lane Club 1.8 million pounds sterling (2.4 million dollars) for the unsuccessful fighting against money laundering (AML).

If Melniks is a kind of mysterious person in different countries, then the current antagonist of the casino, Puharic, is the same.

News articles in his native Latvia describe him as a “famous player” who earned “a whole lot of money”.

He is currently involved in a separate legal argument over ownership of Rolls Royce and Mercedes Benz worth 5 million pounds (6.6 million dollars).

Puharic says that they belong to him and claims that he paid 5000 pounds (6.6 thousand dollars) a month to keep them at the parking of the hotel Grosvenor House, and as well Park Lane, Mayfair.