Contradictory signal regarding casinos in Chile

Recently, the Resolution Council of the Superintendency of Casinos and Games delivered the operating permits for the casinos of Antofagasta and El Maule, where the winners were the company Dalmatia Gamming - whose shareholders include the Enjoy group, which has operated said casino since 2008 - and the Ríos Claros Society, linked to the Dreams group, respectively.

The fact did not fail to attract attention, since Enjoy and Dreams are under investigation by the National Economic Prosecutor's Office due to a complaint of possible collusion. Although the investigation is in full swing and no guilt has yet been determined, the case has been surrounded by media spectacularity, since another of the alleged parties involved in this collusion complaint, Marina del Sol, filed for compensated denunciation, and The homes of its main executives were raided some time ago. The complaint, in fact, already had implications, because it was surely one of the factors that led Enjoy and Dreams to reject in April the merger plans that they had announced 15 months earlier, and that would have given rise to one of the largest operators of games in the region.

It is in these circumstances that it is worth asking why such a relevant precedent as an investigation of this nature in practice did not have any impact on the award process, sticking to deciding based on the economic proposals that the different participants submitted to the authority. . Even in the case of Antofagasta, at some point Dreams was also competing to win said casino, but it finally fell by the wayside.

Although everything indicates that in these awards the procedures and requirements established by law were fully complied with, the case justifiably leads to the question of whether it is pertinent that since there are pending cases, especially in the case of collusion, the State still issues operating licenses, without first clearing the judicial edge or there being a little more clarity about the plausibility of the reported facts.

It is worth asking whether the current legislation should be re-examined in light of these facts, especially since it is evident that before the State itself there are different standards to assess cases where a plan has eventually been orchestrated to violate the legislation. Thus, and regarding the case of money messes that has involved countless foundations currently under judicial investigation that took millionaire public funds for purposes very different from those declared, the State has not hesitated to immediately cut many of these agreements. and has requested the restitution of the funds, without waiting for the results of the investigations. Such a procedure has been considered correct, because without prejudice to the fact that a crime is proven, the antecedents that denote a manifest irregularity are overwhelming.

There is no doubt that allegations of collusion must be treated with extreme caution; It is necessary to immediately clarify that this is not a maneuver to dislodge competitors; Care must also be taken to ensure that there are no early guilty pleas, and in some cases, as is the case with casino license renewals, there are operational continuity issues involved. But in the eyes of citizens it certainly seems strange, at the very least, that in the face of a procedure that is organized and resolved by the State itself, antecedents of this type have no impact on the process.