In this regular feature in IAG to celebrate 17 years covering the Asian gaming and leisure industry, we look back at our cover story from exactly 10 years ago, “Foreign affairs”, to rediscover what was making the news in December 2012!
In December 2012, Inside Asian Gaming cast light on the record number of bribery cases being prosecuted by the Barack Obama administration under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and how this might impact the global gaming industry going forward.
In particular – and certainly worth looking back on given recent events in Manila – IAG pointed to the then relatively new feud between Steve Wynn and his one-time partner in Las Vegas, Japanese pachinko king Kazuo Okada. If anything in our industry was to attract the attention of US authorities, we argued, it was “talking out of school” by each party in an effort to destabilize the other.
Certainly the Wynn-Okada feud of the time did not lack for explosive allegations. Mr Okada, who helped fund the development of Wynn Las Vegas before falling out with Mr Wynn and seeing his Wynn Resorts stockholding forcibly redeemed, alleged in his March 2012 counterclaim that he was ousted from the corporation for challenging the authority of Chairman and CEO Steve Wynn, apparently around questions he says he’d raised about the propriety of a US$135 million donation Wynn had pledged to a University of Macau foundation in May 2011. This, Mr Okada noted, was to be paid in 11 annual instalments, the final of which was to be made the year Wynn’s Macau casino concession was due to expire.
For his part, Mr Wynn had justified the forced redemption of Mr Okada’s stocks by claiming the latter had breached his trust by engaging in unlawful activities on Wynn property. Specifically, it was alleged that Mr Okada had provided officials from the Philippines with substantial gifts and entertainment in his attempts to win their favor – part of his dream of developing a large-scale integrated resort in Manila.
Ultimately, IAG wrote, it was these efforts from the sparring industry giants that had attracted the attention of officials and brought both under risk of FCPA sanctions.
Enforcement action would eventually be dropped although neither Mr Wynn nor Mr Okada can claim any sort of victory – the former forced to step down as Wynn Resorts Chairman and CEO in 2018 due to sexual assault allegations and the latter ousted from Universal Entertainment Corp on allegations of fraud.
Ironically, while Mr Okada’s Philippines dream became a reality with the December 2016 launch of Okada Manila, he has not been able to enjoy it since falling foul of the company he founded.
Nor was he party to a 2018 settlement agreement between Wynn Resorts, Aruze USA and Universal Entertainment Corp that saw Universal paid US$2.5 billion in respect to the 20% Wynn Resorts stake that Wynn had forcibly redeemed from Mr Okada six years earlier.
It is under this cloud that Mr Okada has turned the focus of his frustration from Wynn to Universal in recent years, albeit without any more luck than in his previous venture.
