Inside Asian Gaming

IAG DEC 2022年12月 亞博匯 142 10 YEARS AGO I n 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 thismight 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