Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | March 2012 2 Editorial Inside Asian Gaming is published by Must Read Publications Ltd 8J Ed. Comercial Si Toi 619 Avenida da Praia Grande Macau Tel: (853) 2832 9980 For subscription enquiries, please email [email protected] For advertising enquiries, please email [email protected] or call: (853) 6680 9419 www.asgam.com Inside Asian Gaming is an official media partner of: http://www.gamingstandards.com Publisher Kareem Jalal Director João Costeira Varela Editor Michael Grimes Operations Manager Jessica Lai Contributors Desmond Lam, Steve Karoul I. Nelson Rose, Richard Marcus James Rutherford, Sudhir Kale James J. Hodl, Jack Regan William R. Eadington Graphic Designer Brenda Chao Photography Ike, Alice Kok, James Leong, Wong Kei Cheong Michael Grimes We crave your feedback. Please email your comments [email protected] Watertight Case? The apparent determination of a labour union in the United States to create a genealogical table of Chinese organised crime relevant to Macau casino gaming raises the interesting question ‘Why now?’. Although the site CasinoLeaks-Macau.com has been in existence for quite some time, it has recently had a flurry of media releases. It’s possible that the timing could be connected with domestic US elections. There’s certainly been wide publicity surrounding Sheldon Adelson’s financial support for Newt Gingrich—and possibly other Republican runners if Mr Gingrich drops out at some point as many expect—in the race to be the Republican Party nominee for the Oval Office this autumn. It’s widely known that Mr Adelson is not exactly effervescent in his enthusiasm for having labour unions in his Las Vegas properties. It’s possible, therefore, that someone somewhere has decided that attempting to embarrass Mr Adelson over his company’s Macau connection might have the effect of swaying US public opinion against any political candidate associated with or receiving funding from him. Just because Macau’s long-reported triad connection is considered ‘old news’ on this side of the world, doesn’t mean that it can be ignored. The recent CasinoLeaks reportage does raise some awkward questions for Western gaming regulators including those in Nevada, as well as for the Macau regulator. If alleged triad connections were enough to get Dr Stanley Ho barred from having gaming licences in the US and Australia, and some of those same associates (or their offspring, cousins or nephews) are now happily doing junket business with the current generation of Macau casino operators, doesn’t that make a nonsense of the approval process that Nevada signed off on when some of its licensees sought to move out to Macau in the early Noughties? It’s unlikely that either the Macau government or Beijing will show any official reaction to the CasinoLeaks publicity. But they are sensitive to how Macau in particular and China in general is portrayed to the outside world. It’s possible that behind the scenes they will press for scrutiny of junket operators to be stepped up. But that leads to another problem—the concept of the‘front’. As Las Vegas came to realise forty years ago, and Singapore learnt more recently, the minute you allow parties outside the casino management to issue credit for casino gambling, you cannot be completely sure who you’re dealing with. The nominal holder of a junket licence can be as holy as Mother Teresa, but you cannot know whether the ‘controlling mind’—to borrow a phrase from English civil law—is someone with less benign intent. Some expect Macau to go the way of Las Vegas in terms of greater regulation as each year rolls by. Out will go the sharp suits, pointy collars and patent leather shoes, and in will come the preppy button down collars and Ralph Lauren jackets goes the thinking. There are already people clamouring for a vetting and licensing system for all individuals that work in the Macau casino industry—in the manner of Singapore. Such a system could certainly work to the advantage of the army of consultants and percentage guys who have already picked most of the low-hanging fruit in the US gaming market. They would potentially be able to interpose themselves in the process, offering the promise of the ‘due diligence’ so fetishised in Western business circles. There are some practical problems with that. One is that the concerns of the US casino market and US domestic politics are not directly equivalent with those of the Macau casino market and of Chinese politics. The US operators with business in Macau have a much more urgent need to make Macau in America’s image than do Macau or Beijing. It’s not impossible that the Chinese could simply give CasinoLeaks, the Nevada regulators and American public opinion in general the old Churchill salute. And then where will we be?