Prince Loads The Dice

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31080, 8 June 1966, Page 23

Prince Loads The Dice

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) Paris, June 7. Prince Rainier, of the pocket-sized principality of Monaco, has loaded the dice in his famous battle with the Greek shipping magnate, Aristotle Onassis, says the “New York Times.”

Onassis is the majorly stockholder in the Soeiete Des Bains de Mer, which holds the exclusive concession to gambling at the Monte Carlo casino.

In a sense, the Prince owns the principality, but Onassis owns the gambling house, and his refusal to modernise his holdings has angered Prince Rainier and, according to the Monacans, hurt the tourist business there. Yesterday the Prince, after more than a year of attempting to buy the Onassis stock (520,000 shares of the existing one million), moved instead to dilute Onassis’ power. He sent to the Monaco Legislature a bill calling for the creating of 600 additional—and Government - owned—shares in the S.B.M.

The Government proposal to expand the number of shares in the S.B.M. is expected to pass the Legislature without any trouble. The Government will buy the shares at the current value, which means that it will be pumping about £4 million into the company. This decision by the Prince is short of out-and-out nationalisation of the Soeiete,

an act some people had urged on him.

“But nationalisation would not have given us the liberal image we wanted,” said one spokesman, “neither politically nor economically.” Among other things, Monaco is a favourite gathering place for deposed aristocracy from various sections of the world, a group unusually sensitive about the idea of Government nationalisation.

Onassis, considered one of the wealthiest men in the world who uses Monaco among other things as a harbour for his mammoth yacht, was not available for comment. “We have no idea at all what his reaction will be,” said a Rainier spokesman. HARDER TIMES Although Monaco was worldfamous as a tourist spot where the old aristocracy arrived, complete with large staff, and gambled away thousands of dollars and heavy Tsarist roubles, it has came on slightly hard times in recent years with the changing mores in both wealth and tourism.

The casino has become a little shabby and rundown, and the Prince has sought to undertake a major rebuilding and modernisation programme for Monte Carlo.

Here, however, he ran into Onassis, who had quietly gone around buying up shares until he was the majority stockholder. But Onassis had no interest at all in Rainier’s development plans—a modernised casino, new hotels, new beaches.

This ended a period of friendship during which the Prince and his wife, the for-

mer actress Grace Kelly. Onassis, and his friend, the opera prima donna, Maria Callas, were frequently seen together.