Casino operator pays $7 million to settle probe
LAS VEGAS — Billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s casino company is paying almost $7 million to U.S. authorities to end a more than five-year corrupt practices investigation of the firm’s former relationship with a consultant in Macao and China, company and federal officials said.
With the agreement announced, Las Vegas Sands Corp. resolved twin probes of more than $60 million paid to an unnamed agent retained in 2006 to acquire a Chinese basketball team, plus other business dealings that include a Beijing real estate deal to promote casinos on the Cotai Strip of Macao, U.S. Justice Department and FBI officials said.
The $6.96 million penalty was in addition to a $9 million civil payment the company made in April to settle a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation that found some payments to the consultant weren’t properly authorized or documented, the government said.
The company wasn’t charged with a crime and did not admit guilt in either case. Sands spokesman Ron Reese characterized the payment announced Thursday as a monetary penalty, and said the non-prosecution agreement made no criminal finding.
The government said none of the people whose conduct was described in the agreement work for Sands any longer. It also credited the company with undertaking extensive remedial measures.
But it offered a scathing summary of alleged wrongdoing.
“Certain Sands executives knowingly and willfully failed to ... adequately ensure the legitimacy of payments” to the consultant, the government said, and “continued to make payments to the consultant despite warnings from its finance staff and an outside auditor that the business consultant had failed to account for portions of these funds.”
The SEC and Justice Department probes were announced at the same time, in 2011, and stemmed from the same alleged acts during the company’s efforts to become a major player in Macau, a former Portuguese colony that has become a gold mine for U.S. casinos.
In the U.S., Sands owns the Venetian and Palazzo resorts on the Las Vegas Strip, and Adelson is a major donor to Republican party candidates.