Connect With Us on Twitter
For Op-Ed, follow@nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Sheldon's been bad...
http://tinyurl.com/92u32sr
SAN FRANCISCO |
(Reuters) - Las Vegas Sands (LVS.N) deceived a Nevada court in an attempt to stall a lawsuit by the former head of its Macau operations, a state judge ruled on Friday, fining the casino operator and abridging its right to object in a fight over key evidence.
The ruling gives former Sands China (1928.HK) Chief Executive Steve Jacobs new room to pursue his wrongful termination case, which has become a public fight over the leadership and business methods used by Sands Chief Executive Sheldon Adelson.
Adelson is a prominent Republican Party donor, as well as one of the richest men in the world, who led U.S. casinos into Macau, a gambling market which dwarfs Las Vegas.
Jacobs contends Adelson directed him to investigate officials in the Chinese gambling haven for information to use against them and that Adelson told him to hire a Macau government official in a potential conflict of U.S. anti-bribery law.
The U.S. Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission and Nevada casino regulators have all launched investigations in the wake of Jacobs' charges.
Sands has denied Jacobs' claims and says the former executive exceeded his authority and conducted "improper acts" before he was fired in 2010, the year after he was hired.
At issue are emails and other electronic data sought by Jacobs. Sands China, a subsidiary of U.S.-based Las Vegas Sands Corp, told the court the data could not be removed from Macau due to a local data protection law.
"The transferred data had already been copied; the copy removed from Macau; and reviewed in Las Vegas by representatives of Las Vegas Sands," District Court Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez wrote in a ruling published on Friday.
Sands' repeated inaccurate statements over several months showed an intention to deceive the court, and the purpose appeared to be to stall the discovery process, she wrote.
"The Defendants concealed the existence of the transferred data from this Court," she concluded.
As punishment, she said the casino company could not use the Macau data privacy law as a defense against producing documents, a clear procedural win for the fired executive.
She also fined Sands $25,000 and some plaintiff's attorney fees. The ruling came after three days of testimony this week.
Neither Sands nor Jacobs' attorney immediately responded to a request for comment.
(Reporting By Peter Henderson in San Francisco and Timothy Pratt in Las Vegas; Editing by Richard Chang)
Saturday, August 18, 2012
If the New York Times is giving an editorial warning to the GOP to back away from Adelson it's a safe bet that something like an indictment is soon to come
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/opinion/in-thrall-to-sheldon-adelson.html?_r=2#comments
EDITORIAL
In Thrall to Sheldon Adelson
Published: August 16, 2012 390 Comments
Three days after Paul Ryan became the presumptive Republican vice presidential candidate, he made a pilgrimage on Tuesday to the Las Vegas gambling palace of Sheldon Adelson, the casino tycoon who is spending more than any other donor to try to send Mr. Ryan and Mitt Romney to the White House. No reporters were allowed, perhaps because the campaign didn’t want them asking uncomfortable questions about the multiple federal investigations into the company behind Mr. Adelson’s wealth.
Related
At Ryan-Adelson Gathering, Budget Talk Trumps Israel(August 15, 2012)
Scrutiny for Casino Mogul’s Frontman in China (August 14, 2012)
Times Topic: Sheldon Adelson
Related in Opinion
Campaign Stops: Embracing Sheldon Adelson (August 6, 2012)
Times Topic: United States Elections
Readers’ Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
Those questions, though, aren’t going away, and neither are the ones about the judgment of Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan in drawing ever closer to a man whose business background should lead them to back away — fast. By not repudiating Mr. Adelson’s vow to spend as much as $100 million on their behalf, the two candidates seem more eager to keep the “super PAC” dollars flowing than to preserve the integrity of their campaign.
The issues swirling about Mr. Adelson’s business practices are not new and can hardly come as a surprise to the Romney campaign. Last year, his company, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, announced that it was under investigation by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — specifically, that it bribed Chinese officials for help in expanding its casino empire in Macau. Later, the F.B.I. became involved, and even Chinese regulators looked askance at the company’s conduct, fining it $1.6 million for violating foreign exchange rules, The Times reported on Monday.
Then there’s an unrelated investigation by the United States attorney’s office in Los Angeles into whether the Sands Corporation violated federal money-laundering laws by accepting millions from high-rolling gamblers accused of drug trafficking and embezzlement.The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that federal authorities are examining whether the casino should have reported the suspicious funds to the government. Instead, the company accepted $100 million from one of the gamblers and gave him free hotel rooms, plane rides and large lines of credit.
The company has denied all allegations of improper behavior. But, since Mr. Adelson’s financial future is riding on the outcome of these federal investigations, it is legitimate to ask whether he has motivation for supporting the Republican ticket so lavishly, beyond his sharp disagreement with the Obama administration’s position on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Mr. Adelson has certainly not hesitated to throw around his weight and wealth with Republicans before.
In 2001, when China was making a pitch to hold the Olympics, it was worried about a resolution pending in the House that would oppose the bid because of its “abominable human rights record.” To curry favor with China, Mr. Adelson called Tom DeLay, then the House majority whip — and another recipient of Mr. Adelson’s campaign generosity — and urged him to block the resolution, according to a court deposition by William Weidner, then the president of Sands. Mr. DeLay quickly promised the bill would never see the light of day, and he was true to his word.
The next day, a Chinese vice premier promised Mr. Adelson an endless line of gamblers to the Macau casino.
A careful presidential campaign would put distance between itself and a businessman like Mr. Adelson. Instead, this one is cultivating him. Mr. Romney recently met with him in Israel, and Mr. Ryan this week paid homage to him and other big donors in a private casino for high-rollers on the 36th floor of Mr. Adelson’s Venetian hotel. By allowing Mr. Adelson to have such an outsize role in their race, the candidates themselves are placing a very risky bet.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Sheldon Adelson: Planning a Pottersville for Spain? He wants the Spanish to allow smoking, minors, immigrants that he chooses and money laundering in his proposed casino?! Unreal?!
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/spain/120803/gambling-Spain-Adelson-EU-EuroVegas
BARCELONA, Spain — Laid-off businesspeople in designer clothes eating in soup kitchens. Young people flocking to study German in the hope of emigrating. Frantic regional governments battling to outdo each other to attract scant investment.
Spaniards are desperate.
Enter American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.
The controversial owner of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. and third-richest American wants to build a version of the Nevada gambling mecca in the outskirts of Madrid or Barcelona. A mega-resort dedicated to entertainment and business conferences, it would include 12 hotels, six casinos and three golf courses spread across 2,000 acres — the biggest urban development project in Spain since the 1992 Olympics.
The main hook: EuroVegas would create up to 250,000 jobs in a country where almost 6 million people, up to a quarter of the workforce, are unemployed.
At least that was the pitch until the projected number fell to 14,000 when the company’s directors visited Spain in June, when they also announced a drop in investment from $21 billion to $7.3 billion, two-thirds of which would have to come from Spanish banks.
Nevertheless, Spain’s two largest cities are lobbying hard against each other for the bid.
“EuroVegas is very important,” said Andreu Mas-Colell, economy minister for Catalonia, of which Barcelona is capital. “We are making the necessary efforts to bring it here.”
But despite the project’s attractiveness to officials, it's generating heated opposition from a growing number of critics who question its viability and criticize what they say would be its harm to society.
More from GlobalPost: Welcome to Creepytown, Spain
Among the grassroots organizations to have joined the protest, "EuroVegas No" represents more than 30 unions and environmental NGOs, as well as the indignados movement that inspired the Occupy movement in New York.
“This project is based on the same economic model that delivered Spain into the crisis to begin with,” says the platform’s spokesperson Maria Fernandez, “speculation in construction and real estate.”
However, she is most unhappy about exceptions to dozens of laws and regulations that Adelson is believed to be demanding for his casinos. Adelson — who is the largest individual financial donor to Republican candidates in the US 2012 presidential campaign — has already opened resorts abroad in Singapore and on the Chinese island of Macao.
Las Vegas Sands has asked the Spanish government to ease labor, immigration and money laundering laws, give minors access to casinos and suspend the national smoking ban in enclosed public spaces, according to the newspapers
sheldon adelson justice department prostitution
I notice that the Press was vbarred from Romney's fundraiser in Israel and Ryan's in Vegas. Easy to understand. They don't want any news fotogs catching them with Adelson. Never can tell what that would bring....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)