LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- Riviera Hotel President Isidore Becker said Wednesday he does not intend 'to let anybody forclose' on the Las Vegas Strip resort as threatened by the Public Employees Retirement System board.
The PERS board, which controls more than $1 billion in state employee retirement funds, agreed in a closed session Tuesday that the Riviera must make payments on a $56 million loan current by July 5 or face foreclosure.
Tom Wiesner, chairman of PERS, said the Riviera would be given no further payment extensions on its $56 million debt to the state pension fund. Wiesner said the hotel had until next month to come up with $5.7 million in back payments or else the state would take legal steps to foreclose.
'We will do everything to protect the fund,' Wiesner said.
'I do not intend to let anybody foreclose,' Becker said.
One alterative to foreclosure would be for the Riviera Hotel to file for a Chapter 11 debt reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
Becker met with attorneys and accountants Wednesday to discuss the next step and called a meeting ofthe hotel board of directors for Monday in New York.
The Riviera Hotel is a wholly owned subsidiary of AITS, a publicly traded company. Becker owns 30 percent of AITS and multimillionaire Meshulam Riklis owns 50 percent.
Filing under Chapter 11 could take months or years to resolve. In the meantime, all Riviera Hotel payments to the state retirement fund would be halted.
'I would hope they would try to cure the default,' Weisner said. 'They have gone months and months without making a payment to us.'
Becker said he learned of the PERS edict through the news media and had not been contacted by representatives the retirement system board.
'I thought it was a bad attitude, hearing it from the newspapers,' he said.
'I thought they would sit down and work out a sensible and plausible alternative for the Riviera,' Becker said. 'I don't understand why they asked for a four or five week investigation if they had no intention of discussing it with me.'
