Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | December 2012 4 T he Act’s criminal provisions have swept up more than 170 individuals and entities, foreign and American both, just in the last dozen or so years— owners, CEOs, presidents, CFOs, directors, treasurers, general managers, employees, joint venture partners, trust fund managers, contractors, translators, even Hollywood producers—mostly in connection with actual or purported schemed tobribe foreign government officials to obtain business or secure some kind of commercial or financial advantage. At least 29 men and women have lost some measure of their physical freedom as a result of FCPA convictions or guilty pleas. More than US$3 billion in fines and other monetary penalties have been exacted. A Louisiana congressman convicted of bribery in a 2009 jury trial that included FCPA charges is doing 13 years. In 2010, a corporate vice president got 87 months after pleading guilty to paying bribes to secure maritime contracts in Panama. And the Act is being enforced more vigorously now than at any time in its history, something Wynn’s lawyers would not have failed to note as relations with Mr Okada got uglier, and from the board’s standpoint Foreign Affairs Barack Obama’s Justice Department is prosecuting more overseas bribery cases involving US companies than any previous administration’s. No gaming operator or executive has yet been charged. But it does cast the highly publicized feud between Wynn Resorts and Kazuo Okada in a dangerous light. The directors of Wynn Resorts were keenly aware of the long arm of American law way before things unraveled with Mr Okada over the Philippines. Now, with the pachinko king in hot water over millions of dollars in alleged bribes funneled to a Filipino fixer through a US company he controls, it appears Wynn was smart to sever ties with its co-founder, the man who provided a big chunk of the seed money behind Wynn Macau and Wynn Las Vegas—“my partner and my friend,” Steve Wynn once hailed him with affection. As for where the company itself stands amidst the wreckage of that relationship, that could depend on how authorities in the States interpret a prosecutorial WMD called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. COVER STORY