Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | December 2012 8 couldn’t have known at this point that his days at the company were numbered, for his first written request for corporate records relating to the University of Macau donation was submitted on 2nd November. Three more requests would follow, on the 17th, the 29th and 12th December. On 11th January of this year, he went into state court in Nevada to demand the information. He also wanted to see records relating to the status of his substantial equity holding as a result of the 2009 divorce settlement between Steve and Elaine Wynn, who is also a director, and records explaining how the company had spent some $30 million he says he provided back in 2002 to get the Macau business off the ground. It was almost exactly one month later, on 13th February, that the Securities and Exchange Commission, which jointly enforces the FCPA, came calling, requesting through its Salt Lake Regional Office that the company “preserve information relating to the donation to the University of Macau, any donations by the Company to any other educational charitable institutions … and the Company’s casino or concession gaming licenses or renewals in Macau”. The irony is somewhat striking since, to hear Wynn tell it, the company’s standing with regard to the FCPA has been of paramount concern going back to 2008. That was the year a Philippines subsidiary of Aruze USA won one of four no-bid licenses from PAGCOR to develop a resort casino on land reclaimed from Manila Bay and christened Entertainment City. Louis Freeh’s background is indicative of just how much this had come to worry the board. His law partners include two retired federal judges, one of whom used to head the SEC’s Enforcement Division. Mr Freeh had been a US attorney and US District judge prior to joining the Clinton administration in September 1993, where he would direct the FBI for almost seven years, continuing in the post for five months more after GeorgeW. Bush took office. After leaving the government he represented Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the US, in the al-Yamameh arms-for-oil scandal involving Europe’s largest defense contractor, UK-based BAE Systems. In 2010, BAE would forfeit US$400 million in one of the largest criminal prosecutions in FCPA history. That same year, as part of the “I love Kazuo Okada as much as any man that I’ve ever met in my life,” Steve Wynn once proclaimed. “And there is hardly anything that I won’t do for him.” COVER STORY The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is being applied more vigorously now than at any time in its history. Almost half of all enforcement actions initiated under it have occurred since Barack Obama took office in 2009, more than under any president going back to Jimmy Carter, who signed the FCPA into law, more than under the 16 years of the Bush and Clinton administrations combined.