Gambler who raked in £1.5m demands £243k for turning up
FOR most gamblers, leaving a casino with an extra £1.5 million in the bank after a high-stakes game of roulette would be considered a success.
But for one wealthy businessman, who claims he was offered commission to play at an exclusive Mayfair hotel, the seven-figure winnings are not enough.
Juste Puharic, a Croatian multi-millionaire, is suing the Park Lane Club, where he staked £27 million in just five days, claiming it promised him a commission to play there but had since refused to pay him.
Mr Puharic told the High Court that he only agreed to risk his millions at the casino after staff targeted him as a mega rich “valuable player” and enticed him to play there with a cash-back offer on his stakes.
He says he is “contractually entitled” to £243,518, representing 0.9 per cent commission on his gambling stakes of £27,057,621, to go with the £1,466,056 winnings that he walked away with after his lucrative stint at the table between May 29 and 30 in 2015. But the club’s owner, Silverbond Enterprises Ltd, is denying his claim, insisting it does not owe Mr Puharic a penny and did not care whether he played at its casino or not.
Christopher Bamford, f or Mr Puharic, said that the businessman had been a regular at Mayfair casinos since
2002, but in 2015 was identified by the Park Lane Club as a valuable player “whom it wished to attract to gamble at the club”.
He was approached on the street by Park Lane Club staff and wooed over coffee and dinner into playing there by being told the club would match or beat the best gaming terms he could get at any other Mayfair casino, he claims. Mr Puharic says that offer meant the club agreed to pay him a 0.9 per cent commission on his stakes, through matching a cash-back deal he was getting at other casinos – win or lose.
Guy Olliff-cooper, for the Park Lane Club’s owners, denied the casino headhunted Mr Puharic or made the offer. The staff member who talked to Mr Puharic in the street had been “not particularly interested” in attracting him as a player to the club, said the barrister. “He was simply trying to be polite,” he told Judge Gavin Mansfield.
“Casinos use a variety of incentives to attract customers. The defendant’s position is simply that it never made him this matching offer.”
The only incentive offered to roulette players at the Park Lane Club was discretionary free hospitality and commission which could be used as a “discount on losses” but not claimed by a player who came out on top.
“The defendant did not offer to match or better the incentives that Mr Puharic received at other Mayfair casinos,” he said.
The judge will give his decision on Mr Puharic’s case at a later date.