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the Fat Man’ for £2mTop casino sues ‘the Fat Man’ for £2m, then says he’s welcome backRajeev Syal
One of the world’s most prolific gamblers, known in casinos as “the Fat Man”, was ordered by a judge yesterday to settle a £2 million gambling debt with a London club.
Fouad al-Zayat, a Syrian-born entrepreneur who is said to have gambled more than £200 million, was told by Mr Justice David Steel to repay the money he had frittered away in a single night at Aspinalls, in Mayfair.
The judgment casts new light on the secretive world of high-class casinos and their relationship with their most lucrative clients. It also cements Mr al-Zayat’s reputation as one of the biggest “whales”, or high spending gamblers, on the international casino circuit.
The judge said that, although Mr al-Zayat had spent nearly £100 million at the club over 12 years, he should now settle his debt.
“The scale of both his wealth and his gambling instincts are revealed by the fact that between October 1994 and April 2006, the defendant visited the claimant’s club on over 600 occasions, purchasing gaming tokens to the value of over £91 million and, in the process, losing over £23 million,” he said.
Mr al-Zayat, 65, ran into trouble with the exclusive club in March 2000 when he lost the money on roulette tables. He wrote out a cheque that was expected to be honoured — he had been a member of the club for many years, one director of the club said. However, when the club tried to cash the cheque, it bounced. The court was told that it later became clear that Mr al-Zayat had sent a fax to his bank cancelling the cheque after a row about croupiers at the club.
Despite the outstanding debt, Mr al-Zayat was allowed to continue to gamble at Aspinalls, the court was told. He lost a further £10 million, which he was asked to settle in cash or debit card transactions.
The club then waited until just before the six-year deadline, after which the debt could not have been reclaimed through the courts, before starting legal action. It successfully applied for a freezing order on Mr al-Zayat’s assets, which included a Boeing 747 and a £158,000 Rolls-Royce.
The judge found in favour of the club and ordered Mr al-Zayat to pay the £2 million, plus the legal costs.
Mr al-Zayat is an imposing figure who is 6ft tall and has a large waistline. He stays at the Four Seasons, Park Lane, when in London. He is a well known figure among the wealthy Lebanese and Syrian communities in Knightsbridge and Kensington and has the reputation of being extremely generous.
One casino director who knows him said: “He is a huge tipper and it’s not unusual for him to tip £5,000 to a waitress who brings him tea and biscuits.”
This is not the first time that Mr al-Zayat, a Syrian Christian, has clashed with a London casino. In 2002 he had legal papers served on him at his apartment at the Grosvenor House hotel by the Ritz Club Casino. They revealed that he had gambled £21 million after becoming a member in 1998.
Court documents showed that Mr al-Zayat visited the casino 156 times between 1999 and 2001, losing nearly £10 million in cash. He then gave the casino seven cheques in exchange for gambling chips worth £2 million. But, the writ alleged, they all bounced.
The Ritz obtained orders freezing Mr al-Zayat’s bank accounts in London, Geneva, Cyprus and the Isle of Man. It sued Mr al-Zayat for the £2 million, plus £90,302 interest on the outstanding debt.
Four years ago, Mr al-Zayat told a newspaper that he had lost large sums at the roulette table in London. “This is the only sin I have,” he said. “I have lost a lot of money. I know it’s wrong to lose money like this, but if you’ve ever been to a casino you will understand what the atmosphere is like.”
Mr al-Zayat is not alone in losing such large sums. In 1999 the late Australian tycoon Kerry Packer lost £7 million during a three-week spree at Crockfords, in Central London. He would sometimes play with all seven hands dealt on the blackjack table — at £250,000 a hand. In 2000 it was said that he lost £13 million at cards at the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas.
In 2002 Adnan Khashoggi, once the world’s richest man, was sued by Ritz Casinos for £3.2 million in unpaid gaming debts. The Saudi-based financier owed the money after a £10 million, four-day gambling spree at the Ritz Club’s roulette tables in 1986.
Mr al-Zayat, who is married with three children, built his fortune on a string of lucrative deals. Former business partners say that he acted as an intermediary in a series of contracts for the supply of defence-related equipment in Cyprus and the Middle East.
As well as Aspinalls and the Ritz, Mr al-Zayat has been a frequent roulette and card player at Crockfords and Les Ambassadeurs, London’s other leading casinos. He has been named in the US courts as a businessman who gave tens of thousands of dollars to a corrupt Republican congressman. Robert Ney was sentenced to 30 months in jail after telling the court that he accepted money from a number of sources, including gambling chips from Mr al-Zayat.
Casino owners are usually reluctant to take any debtors to court because existing members might fear public exposure in the future. James Osborne, the managing director of Aspinall’s, said that the club regretted having to take Mr al-Zayat to court and said that he remained a member and would be welcomed back if he so wished.
“We took this action with great regret,” he said. “He really is a very charming man. We only decided to take legal action after waiting six years.”
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