The microstate of Andorra’s recent decision to award its sole casino license to a small local company has led spurned bidders to mount a legal challenge of the tender.

In June, Andorra’s gaming regulator, Consell Regulador Andorrà del Joc (CRAJ), announced that local firm Jocs SA had won the competition to build a €15m, 4,000-square-meter casino in the capital Andorra la Vella. The venue is tipped to open in September 2020.

This decision baffled many of the big international casino operators who’d submitted bids, including Malaysian giant Genting, who’d vowed to spend nearly ten times the amount that Jocs (which translates as Games) had budgeted. Now, after a little digging, five of these jilted giants think they smell a rat.

The aggrieved operators — Genting, Barrière, Casinos Austria, Cirsa and Partouche — questioned how SIQ, the Slovenian company that helped the CRAJ evaluate the bid criteria, could have awarded Jocs full marks for having 10 years experience managing casino operations, in that Jocs has zero experience running casinos, only bingo halls.