Silver Heritage seeks non-court route in Nepal row

Apr 09, 2018 Newsdesk Latest News, Rest of Asia, Top of the deck  

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Casino operator and developer Silver Heritage Group Ltd says it is seeking non-court resolution for a dispute with a former consultant it employed in Nepal.

Silver Heritage recently launched a purpose-built gaming venue called Tiger Palace Resort, Bhairahawa, near Nepal’s border with the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The resort had a budgeted cost of circa US$52 million.

A former local consultant to the firm, Rajendra Bajgain, is also a 5-percent owner of a local entity that holds the gaming licence for Tiger Palace. The group terminated his consultancy deal on February 22, but Mr Bajgain had started court action in Nepal seeking reinstatement.

Silver Heritage’s chairman David Green had said in the group’s annual report filed with the Australian Securities Exchange in late March, that after the opening of Tiger Palace’s casino (pictured) in late December, Mr Bajgain had “embarked on a series of actions apparently calculated to bring the group into disrepute in Nepal, and to frustrate its operations at Tiger Palace”.

In a Friday update, Silver Heritage said it had “agreed with Mr Bajgain to continue ongoing discussions to settle the disputes between the parties without need for further court action”.

The company nonetheless stated while a Nepal court had granted Mr Bajgain a temporary stay of the consultancy termination, Silver Heritage was “confident” that the decision to split with him was valid, and “believes that it will ultimately prevail when the substantive issues are ventilated before the court”.

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