Veep Takes Dim View of Russian Casino Investment
by Rod Hughes
A Russian company is aiming to build a giant casino here and some politicians, including Vice President Laura Chinchilla, are suspicious of it and all such projects. In an exclusive interview with the newspaper Al Dia, Chinchilla made no secret that she takes a dim view of casinos in general and is worried that the government has no idea who the partners in the project are.
An element of Costa Rican political structure here is opposed to gambling in general and the Legislative Assembly once passed a gambling law so convoluted that no one could decipher it, let alone follow it. A good example of this was the issue of roulette wheels. Some years ago, the casino at the Aurola Holiday Inn was raided by police and the internal axis of the wheels confiscated, disabling them. Within weeks, the court made authorities return the apparatus.
At that time, the Provincial Governor had jurisdiction about what constituted legal gaming.(The office of governor has since been eliminated and its duties taken over by the central government and municipalities.) This reporter remembers being astounded several decades ago when the legal counsel for the governor’s office cheerfully admitted that neither he nor anyone else could quite figure out what lawmakers had in mind. More recently, two sportsbooks in the center of San Jose were arbitrarily shut down by the municipality in what could only be an abuse of authority.
The law, as the vice president noted in her interview, states that casinos must be allied with a hotel. An exception to this was Casino Club Colonial, the oldest extant casino in the country, allowed to continue because its existence pre-dated passage of the legislation. The casino was established in the 1970s in a cozy little Spanish-style house on First Avenue and later a new building built across the avenue, still the most architecturally tasteful of the casinos in the country. But, undeterred, bureaucrats made the owner so uncomfortable that he later built a hotel to go with the casino and end all doubt about conforming with the regulations. (It had been obviously a “grandfather” situation and perfectly legal.)
The vice president, once the country’s chief of Public Security, as totally frank with the Al Dia interviewer. “The message is clear,” she said, “This kind of investment isn’t welcome. Casinos were installed here because there was a legal vacuum. We now want casinos to be part of the activity of hotels but the hotel should be fundamental and not an excuse (to install casinos).” When asked if the discouraging of a new business that already exists in Costa Rica was not a contradiction, Chinchilla was unrepentant. “At one time, we allowed them to come in and if we kicked them out we’d have to pay indemnities. We don’t want to continue with this policy and now I ask Costa Ricans if they’d like to fill their country with casinos.”
Representatives of the Russian company, Storm International BV, told the newspaper that they have all the permits needed to begin construction in July and the vice president admits nothing opponents of gambling can do about it. Meanwhile, she says President Oscar Arias will put into effect a decree with new ground rules after Easter.
To change the policy permanently would likely need legislation and how many congressmen share her hostility to this kind of activity is a question only time would tell. Certainly, Evangelicals in the country do share it and members of this church in the Legislative Assembly were instrumental in passage of the current restrictive gambling law. And the compromises they had to make with pro-gambling factions to get the law passed certainly helped create the confused, often contradictory, rules under which casinos now function.
This affected even the games. The law was based on permitting traditional Spanish games. Thus, blackjack is called “tute” here, that being an old game. So, in advertising in the English-language publications here, casinos have always used the Spanish name. Texas hold ‘em, on the other hand, often appears in advertising because no other name exists, being a sort of Las Vegas invention and because authorities either turn a blind eye or, more likely, are so confused by the law that they have given up. Slot machines are not permitted but the law has no clear clause about their modern, electronic equivalent.
As an ex-cop, Chinchilla worries about the kind of clientele some casinos attract. The reporter mentioned that some hotel-casinos seem to be more like houses of prostitution than casinos. Chinchilla agreed, mentioning one well-known San Jose hotel and added, “Something is going to have to be done to stop this. The hotel has a circle of vice and prostitution. It’s a disaster and shameful.”
This hotel, it might be pointed out, had that reputation even before it installed its casino. It may be that the crusading vice president can put a lid on such activities. But no one, except perhaps Chinchilla, is betting on it.