Gambler is ordered to pay the Ritz £2m
A WEALTHY gambler who lost £2million in one session at a casino has been ordered to honour the debt after he tried to avoid paying.
Property tycoon Safa Abdulla Al Geabury was sued by the Ritz Club casino in London when the cheque he used to buy roulette chips bounced.
Mr Geabury, 52, claimed he should not have to meet his losses because the ‘devil made me gamble’ and, as a gambling addict, he should have been barred from the casino. But a High Court judge dismissed his claim yesterday, saying the Swiss national was the ‘author of his own misfortunes’.
She ordered Mr Geabury to repay the £2million – plus £200,000 in interest which has been accruing at the rate of £438 a day since the incident in February last year. Mr Geabury’s counter-claim for £3.4million he gambled away at the Ritz between 2010 and 2014 was also dismissed.
High-roller Mr Geabury, who claims he is worth more than £600million, admits he is hopelessly addicted to gambling. The former foreign exchange and diamond dealer went on the spree at the Ritz after watching a football match in a private box at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium.
He bought chips, writing a cheque for £2million – well within the £5million credit the Ritz had allowed him. After losing it all on the roulette wheel, he signed a form excluding himself from the club for life, writing in capitals: ‘I AM AN ADDICT.’
The next day the cheque was returned unpaid. Mr Geabury did not dispute signing the cheque, but said he had excluded himself from the casino for life in 2009. His barrister argued that by allowing him to gamble after that, the club breached the terms of its gaming licence.
The Ritz said it had let him back him in after he signed a form stating that he did not have a problem with gambling. Mr Geabury, who rents a home in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, had voluntarily excluded himself from many other London casinos, writing on one form: ‘I have brain problem. I am addict of gambling.’
Ruling in favour of the Ritz, Mrs Justice Simler said Mr Geabury failed to establish he had any gambling disorder, adding: ‘He was the author of his own misfortunes.’
She added: ‘Whilst to many it may seem irrational to gamble at the levels involved here, given the defendant’s undoubted wealth, his gambling as a VIP player was plainly within his means, and his own autonomy.’
The Ritz Club welcomed the judgment, adding it was ‘committed to ensuring the strictest standards of care towards both our customers and staff at all times’.
Last August the High Court rejected a similar claim against the Ritz by Noral Al Daher, 47, wife of the Oman foreign minister, who gambled away £2million.
‘Plainly within his means’