Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim stressed today that no casino license will be approved by the government in Forest City.
Anwar, who is also the Minister of Finance, informed the Bloomberg report that quoted sources about the consideration for the license as factually wrong.
“Do not have. They raised (regarding) the casino license… it’s a lie, it’s not true,” he answered briefly to the media after attending the Aidilfitri event jointly organised by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (KPKT) and the Ministry of Communications in Putrajaya, today (Apr 25).
It was reported that Malaysia is negotiating with several tycoons to establish a casino in Forest City which was deemed as a US$100 billion (RM480 billion) project in Johor.
The business portal quoted sources as saying the Prime Minister met Berjaya Corp founder Tan Sri Vincent Tan and Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay of the Genting Group in a lunch meeting last week to discuss the matter.
Representatives of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong Sultan Ibrahim, as well as other senior government officials, were also said to be present at the meeting, according to the report. Sultan Ibrahim is one of the shareholders of the project.
According to the report, discussions about the casino project were still in the early stages.
Forest City in Iskandar Puteri, Johor was initially planned as an integrated residential development project. The construction of the project began in 2006, involving a consortium of Chinese real estate developers.
However, the project ran into problems in 2018 when then Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad declared that foreigners would not be granted visas to live in Forest City.
In fact, the currency controls introduced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2019 drastically restricted potential customers and the Covid-19 pandemic attack dealt a heavy blow to the project. Today, the Forest City project, dubbed the “underwater city”, is like a ghost town.
But on August 25, Anwar announced Forest City as a special financial zone as a measure to attract foreign investment and further increase foreign investment in Johor.
He said that the special zone gives privileges to Johor which is a neighbour to Singapore in addition to having complete facilities in Forest City.
