Poland’s casino license derbies have turned nasty as two competitors accuse each other of making wildly outlandish revenue claims to boost their chances of winning new licenses.

Last week, Polish business news outlet Puls Biznesu reported on the rather fanciful claims made about the revenue potential of certain casino operations by Zbigniew Benbenek’s ZPR group, which operates 28 of the country’s 40 casinos.

Polish law allows for a maximum of 52 casino licenses and new casino licenses must be issued via public tender. The Ministry of Finance judges license applications by a point system predicated on, amongst other criteria, their expected revenue projections. But only the projections for the first three years of operations are subject to verification, meaning operators can promise the moon without fear of blowback.

In the case of an April 2018 tender for casino licenses in the Lodz region, ZPR’s application estimated that gaming revenue would total PLN38m (US$10.2m) in each of the first three years. But ZPR claims revenue will leap to PLN409m ($110m) in year four, rising to PLN4.6b ($1.24b) in year five and hitting just under PLN23b ($6.2b) in year six.