Malta Gaming Authority’s helped businessman Yorgen Fenech has drafted a letter about Fenech’s Portomaso Casino license extension. The letter was submitted to the head of the regulatory.
Edwina Licari was the legal counsel of MGA in 2015. In that time, she drafted a letter through a private email with the reasons why Portomaso Casino should have extended its license overseen with Malta’s gambling industry.
Licari kept Joseph Cuschieri as CC in that letter. Cuschieri was the CEO of the regulatory at that time. Then Licari further sent an individual email to the businessman and in that letter, Cuschieri was not included.
The draft was written to explain Fenech’s convenient efforts for a deserving license extension for Portomaso Casino operations. This casino executes all operations through Tumas Gaming Ltd., which is also a subsidiary business of Tumas Group. He also owned many subsidiary business ventures.
Fenech signed in Licari’s draft letter and Tumas Gaming officially sent it to Cuschieri. The MGA boss acclaim the gambling industry’s initial investment in a feedback email one week later.
Cuschieri let know Fenech in official correspondence that the Maltese regulator would extend the Portomaso Casino’s license after it got expired in 2016’s August.
Rival against license renewal
Dragonara Gaming Ltd gets annoyed with Portomaso Casino’s license renewal. Dragonara Gaming Ltd. is the operator of Dragonara Casino. At the beginning of 2017, the gaming operator confronted the license extension plead in court.
It claimed that Tumas Gaming had allowed operating the same casino with a license extension disregarding following any competitive process over a public call by the Maltase government.
Cuschieri claimed – no collusion
Cuschieri was asked about the email exchange between Fenech and MGA. He denied anything of controversial behavior and everything about the letter. He claimed that he didn’t send the letter for license renewal confirmation purposes. Licari also could not explain the reason behind using private non-MGA email for this letter.
In 2020, Licari and Cuschieri both landed in hot water. Then local media disclosed that they were on a paid trip with Fenech to Las Vegas in later 2018.
Fenech blamed Malta’s top leading journalist Daphne Caruana for the murder. Malta put this case into a political bedlam. Now, Malta’s Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit and MGA conducting a money-laundering investigation against Tumas Gambling activities.
