Hard controversy in Uruguay on Hotel Casino Carrasco tender process

Representative of the consortium comprised by Hyatt chain and Liberman Group, Marcelo Graniero, questioned the transparency of the tender process and said that the city council „is going to have another failure, like Carmitel II“, with regards to the previous and controversial tender concluded by Ehrlich administration.

Graniero commented that none of the other three firms interested in the tender (Codere, Tsakos and Pestana) showed to have the economic and financial support demanded by the Council. It was affirmed by National Corporation for the Development.

„The documents were extremely demanding, both from the architectural and financial point of view. It had three main demands on the space: 50% rooms, 30% services and 20% for the casino. The architect (an expert that worked in the transformation of the Brazilian city of Curitiba) pointed us that, in order to develop a “Mediterranean Hotel Casino”, as pointed by the Montevideo Council (IMM), the rooms could not be 3 × 3 That’s why a module was added in order to comply with the demand, increasing the investment”.

„When the offers passed to be studied by the National Corporation for Development, it said that just US chain Hyatt certified the financial system. After this exam, they couldn’t qualify, due to the observations. However, IMM kept on with the process and allows that the economic support is certified after the tender. It violates the sealed documents, It is a scandal”, he said.

He added that the group that he represents appeared before “more than 40 times to Hotel Carrasco“ and warned that there is no record that Tsakos has gone to see the hotel. Graniero said that he expects the results to be revised by authorities of the council in the week-end.

Tsakos representative, Armando Bonilla, said that the economic support of the company „is irrefutable“ and rejected Graniero statement that said that the company was qualified “without seeing the development”.

„We know the hotel much better than them, because have been trying to buy it for two years. We tried to acquire Carmitel when it was broken and studied everything deeply. After that, we presented our expression of interest last year”, declared Bonilla.

A few hours before knowing the result of the opening of the first envelope, Pestana representatives preferred not to make statements.

Codere-Accor obtained 47.06 points, Tsakos 46.21 points, Hyatt-Liberman 31, 40 point and Pestana 26, 81 points. The result of the first stage would leave no chances to Hyatt and Portuguese group Pestana. The second and last one has to do with the fee and will have a maximum value of 40 points. Codere received more points than Tsakos, however, it obtained the best mark due to its business plan: 15.38 compared to 13.06 of Codere.