A major political controversy has surfaced over the approval granted to a prominent Sri Lankan company to operate a casino within the City of Dreams hotel complex in Colombo.
This controversy stems from the fact that the facility in question has proceeded to establish a large-scale casino on the premises, despite a cabinet paper unanimously passed during the Yahapalana government in 2015—under the leadership of then-President Maithripala Sirisena—explicitly banning casino operations at that location.
During the Yahapalana administration, former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s party had initially authorized companies such as Waterfront Properties, Lake Leisure Holdings, and Queensbury Leisure Limited to operate casinos under special tax concessions. However, President Sirisena later moved to revoke that approval through a cabinet decision dated January 31, 2015.
The central question now is how the institution obtained permission to open a casino on the same premises when a cabinet decision had clearly prohibited such operations.
Following Sirisena’s presidency, Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe each held office, with Anura Kumara Dissanayake currently serving as President. If casino operations are now legally permitted on the premises, the cabinet decision made under President Sirisena would have to have been formally repealed and replaced with a new one authorizing such activity.
This raises several critical questions: Was a new cabinet paper passed to reverse the 2015 ban? If so, under which president was it enacted, when was it approved, and where is the official documentation? Furthermore, there is now serious concern as to whether the legally mandated 45% tax on income from casino operations is being properly enforced.
According to information obtained by the Mawrata newspaper, multiple parties are reportedly preparing to take legal action on this issue in the near future.
