Neonopolis chief disputes documents

Wednesday, March 7, 2007 | 7:12 a.m.

The man running the Neonopolis project downtown misrepresented his relationship with a Hong Kong billionaire, according to documents to be presented at today's Las Vegas City Council meeting.

But Rohit Joshi challenges those claims and produced a letter showing he had Stanley Ho's permission to look for potential real estate opportunities in the United States.

John Keamy, who represents several people with civil judgments against Joshi, says Joshi misrepresented his relationship with Ho and his Shun Tak Holdings, a shipping, property, investment and hospitality giant.

The eight-year-old documents are the latest salvo in an ongoing dispute between Keamy and Joshi.

Joshi is scheduled to appear before the council today to renew the parking validation program for Neonopolis. Keamy plans to present the documents during the public comment period, even though none of the letters deals with Neonopolis.

Keamy represents Las Vegas businessman John Mullen, former Major League Baseball player Darren Daulton and others with claims against the Neonopolis operator. Joshi disputes those judgments.

In December, Keamy presented the unpaid civil judgments to council, which prompted Mayor Oscar Goodman to ask City Attorney Brad Jerbic to investigate Joshi. Jerbic determined that the judgments were not sufficient reason for the city to question Joshi with regard to the Neonopolis project.

Keamy said he hopes the new documents will persuade city officials to take a closer look at Joshi.

Keamy gave the Sun copies of the following letters:

Chan did not respond to calls or faxes from the Sun.

On Tuesday Joshi challenged the claims made against him. He produced a letter of his own that indicates he received permission from Ho in July 1998 to look for U.S. real estate opportunities on behalf of Strong Champion Investments.

In a prepared statement Joshi said:

"No transactions were ever enacted on Dr. Ho's behalf, and no real estate projects were ever entered into escrow as the letter to Mr. Chan alleges. As a matter of fact, a short time prior to the date of that letter, we had mutually agreed not to pursue any other projects in the United States."

The last part of this statement contradicts the correspondence by Chan that no one from Shun Tak had been in contact with Joshi in more than a year at that time.

Chan further stated that the letter he received from Mullen appeared to be a copy of the letter signed by Ho, with the exception that the words "in Macau" had been deleted.

"We cannot account for this discrepancy," Chan stated in the Oct. 7 letter to Mullen.

Chan also seems to question the validity of some of Mullen's claims, as the following excerpt indicates:

"We cannot understand how an exploratory letter of intent could form the basis of any representation that we were Mr. Joshi's 'financial source' or otherwise. Any reliance on this type of document would have been completely unjustified. If, indeed, there had been any question as to our involvement in any project presented by Mr. Joshi it would have been very simple to contact us directly to ascertain and to verify our involvement."

It is also unclear why that document had the words "in Macau" deleted, as indicated in the correspondences between Chan and Mullen.

Mullen contends Joshi altered the document to suggest his authorization to represent Shun Tak extended beyond Macau and into the U.S.

Joshi said he does not recall such a document.

"There were many documents going back and forth and it was a long time ago," he said.

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