“We are confirming that we are no longer pursuing our bid to acquire a gaming licence in Cyprus,” Bloomberry’s director of investor relations, Leo Venezuela, said on Tuesday in an emailed response to GGRAsia online news outlet. The report said he did not disclose the reasons why Bloomberry had dropped out of the race.

The above statement was confirmed to the Cyprus Mail as being accurate by Venezuela, in an email later on Tuesday. Though asked, again he did not provide a reason for the move.

Recent press reports suggested that Bloomberry and NagaCorp were unable to find suitable land for their planned casino resorts.

The government in March announced the names of the three short-listed bidders for the casino resort licence. Along with Bloomberry, the other two names were, Melco – Hard Rock Resort Cyprus Consortium, and Naga Corp Ltd. The names had already been widely reported in the media.

Reportedly Hard Rock is looking at Limassol, Bloomberry was looking at Paphos and Nagacorp at Larnaca.

The three were to participate in the second stage of the process – submitting complete proposals by October 5, 2016.

In the first stage of the process eight candidates expressed an interest and were evaluated based on the set criteria.

Speaking about the casino on Sunday, Tourism Minister Giorgos Lakkotrypis said he would have liked to have seen a casino licence much earlier.

“There is no doubt that it is an ambitious project, especially due to the model that we have chosen, which is the resort casino, unlike the rest of Europe which chose many smaller casinos. So we believe this will give us additional competitive advantages,” Lakkotrypis said.

The minister confirmed the deadline for proposals was on October 5. “Our intention is before the end of the year to evaluate and award the winning bid,” he said, adding that there was a possibility that the winning bidder might be allowed, if they wished, to operate a temporary casino immediately until the resort is completed.

Source: Cyprus Mail