It is well-known fact that the Children of Israel enjoy gambling and lotteries, and rush to bet on the roulette wheel to the great benefit of others. It is also clear that the buses to the Oasis Casino in Jericho will resume shortly; it is possible to go to the Taba Casino outside Eilat in Sinai without a passport, and in the Gulf of Eilat are two casino ships owned by Israeli businessmen.
It is also known that Oasis Casino co-owner Austrian businessman Martin Schlaff wants to operate a large casino ship, a plan presently blocked by the Ports and Railroad Authority, which refuses to grant anchorage rights. Schlaff wants to be legitimate, unlike the owners of the other casino ships, who claim they are running cruises. The conclusion is that it is time for a legal casino in Israel.
The big enigmatic question is what about Mifal Hapayis - Israel National Lottery? Why give Israel’s lottery monopoly, whose management and decision-making procedures have been the subject of unflattering criticisms by the State Comptroller for years, additional domination of the market? Instead of eliminating Mifal Hapayis’s exclusive license, and granting licenses to other entities in exchange for royalties to the state treasury, the government wants to double and redouble Mifal Hapayis. It’s absurd: the epitome of capitalism is be given to the Government Companies Authority, and moreover, without a tender.
Eilat is Israel’s city of rest and recreation, and therefore the most suitable location for a casino. It already has far more than Las Vegas did in the beginning: an airport, hotels of every quality, a tourism infrastructure, competition across the border in Taba, and even an existing customer base from the casino ships offshore.
The Eilat municipality wants to include a casino in its application to build an international exhibition and convention center. It is demanding the right to establish a bureau that will institute strict regulations for operating a casino, and publish a tender for a permanent or fixed-term franchise.
The municipality’s plan would generate hundreds of millions of shekels in state revenues. But if the government gives Mifal Hapayis a free gift, the competition will be stillborn, the economic benefits will be infinitesimal, and the casino will end up resembling Mifal Hapayis: a bunch of middling pasty political hacks who have been the subject of scores of investigative reports by the media (the most recent in last Friday’s weekend supplement of Hebrew daily “Ma’ariv”). And as long as the government is giving a present to Mifal Hapayis, why not to Magen David Adom?
The prime minister, his aides, and family must act with scrupulous care in all state matters pertaining to casinos and Mifal Hapayis. Here are some of them:
At the advice of his son MK Omri Sharon, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon recently appointed Shimon Katznelson as Mifal Hapayis chairman. There is already talk of appointing former Likud Party director general Arik Barami as Mifal Hapayis general manager.
One of the potential bidders in Mifal Hapayis’s tender to operate a casino is a company owned by Schlaff, the owner of Jericho’s’ Oasis Casino. Schlaff is represented in Israel by Prime Minister’s Bureau director Adv. Dov Weissglas.
The Israel Police National Fraud Unit, which is already investigating the loan by South African Cyril Kern to the Sharon family, now has to carry out two inquiries - one in South African and a second in Austria. The police found the South African money arrived in Israel via an Austrian bank account opened by Kern. The police reportedly want to investigate if the Austrian Schlaff, who has been a guest at Sharon’s Sycamore Farm, has any connection to the affair.
In short, there are too many hypothetical links between the Sharon family, Mifal Hapayis, and its proposed casino tender. Extreme caution is warranted.
The prime minister’s aides say that Schlaff will emerge worst off from the affair, due to drop in demand for his Oasis Casino and his planned casino ship in Eilat. And so, any allegations of conspiracies, hypothetical or otherwise, are baseless and tasteless rubbish.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on June 25, 2003