The billionaire’s Las Vegas trial heard claims that his Macao casino had organised crime links but the 81-year-old was more interested in telling lawyers’ their job

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This article is more than 5 years old

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Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire Republican party donor, continued the fight for the reputation of his casino empire in a Las Vegas court on Friday at the end of a week that brought accusations of links to organised crime and of laundering millions of dollars from a suspected drug trafficker.

Adelson once again put up a combative performance, spending the first half an hour of Friday’s hearing avoiding a direct answer to a question as to whether he recognised an email sent in his name.

The multibillionaire, judged by Forbes to be the world’s eighth richest man, earlier in the week denounced as “delusional and fabricated” allegations by the former head of his casino operations in Macao that the Las Vegas Sands’ subsidiary was involved in influence-peddling with a legislator in the Chinese enclave and used men with ties to Chinese organised crime gangs, the triads, to bring in high-rolling gamblers.

Adelson is being sued for wrongful dismissal and defamation by the former CEO of his highly profitable Macao casinos, Steven Jacobs, who claims he was fired in 2010 because he stopped what he described as excessive payments to a Macao lawyer and legislator, Leonel Alves, on the grounds they might be in breach of US anti-bribery laws.

Jacobs also claims Adelson objected to his efforts to end ties to the triads. The case is being monitored by the Nevada gaming authorities because it has implications for Las Vegas Sands’ licences.

On Friday, Adelson again strongly denied any wrongdoing by his company as Jacobs’ counsel sought to portray the 81-year-old Las Vegas Sands chairman as far more hands on than he admits in the running of the Macao casinos. In response, Adelson accused Jacobs of planting stories in the Wall Street Journal alleging “Sands involvement in prostitution and bribery”.



But little light was shed as Adelson repeatedly challenged even straightforward questions from Jacobs’ lawyer, James Pisanelli.

“It’s an outrageous, overreaching nerve to ask me if I remember this meeting,” he said in answer to one question.

In response to others, the Las Vegas Sands chairman launched into comments about burden of proof, spoke about how he trained as a secretary and lectured Pisanelli on the arguments the lawyer was permitted to make.

At one point, Adelson started disagreeing with the judge, Elizabeth Gonzalez, over whether he had to answer a question.

“Sir, you don’t get to argue with me,” Gonzalez told Adelson.

Eventually an exasperated Pisanelli said: “Let’s see if we can get through the easy stuff.”

Adelson returned to the stand the day after his current deputy – and former head of global operations – Robert Goldstein, acknowledged that the Sands’ Macao subsidiary had had a close business relationship with an alleged triad leader, Cheung Chi Tai.

Goldstein said he pushed hard to end ties between the Macao casino operation and Cheung after he was identified in the press as the leader of an organised crime group.

Las Vegas Sands moved against Cheung following a Reuters report in 2010, based on the work of the Investigative Reporting Program at University of California, Berkeley, naming him as a leader of the Wo Hop To, a triad gang.

The report said that Cheung had also been named in a criminal trial in Hong Kong as “the person in charge” of one of the VIP rooms at the Sands Macau.

Goldstein acknowledged in court that Cheung ran so-called “junkets” which brought in high-rolling gamblers from other parts of China in return for a large cut from the Macao casinos. The Las Vegas Sands executive also said that Cheung was himself a major gambler at the company’s Macao and Las Vegas casinos.

Goldstein said publication of the Reuters report prompted a reaction within Adelson’s company.

“I pushed strongly for termination of the relationship with Cheung,” he said. “We didn’t want him as a customer in any of our buildings or running junkets.”

But Goldstein said that the company wanted to treat Cheung “with respect” and sent a senior executive to tell him to stay away.

Goldstein did not say, and was not asked, if the company knew of Cheung’s alleged triad role before the press reports.

Asked how he viewed the triads, Goldstein said: “It has different meanings to different people. But I’ve come to view it as a mafia criminal group.”

Goldstein also offered insight into the gambling practices of the super rich. He said the Sands group used to run a system where money paid into a casino in one country can be used to gamble at a casino of the same chain in a different country.

Goldstein told the court that Las Vegas Sands stopped the practice in 2013 because of concerns that it bypassed banking regulations.

“We are the only company that doesn’t do it,” he said. “It cost us a lot of business.”

But Jacobs’ counsel, Todd Bice, put it to Goldstein that Las Vegas Sands only curbed the practice as part of an agreement with the US justice department over alleged money laundering. Before Goldstein could answer, a heated disagreement with lawyers for Adelson’s companies broke out.

Bice said Las Vegas Sands had paid a fine to settle accusations of money laundering. Adelson’s counsel vehemently objected to the terminology, saying the casino company had merely reached an out-of-court settlement for mistakenly failing to file the right paperwork on time.

But Bice told the court that Las Vegas Sands had paid a $47m penalty for failing to report transferring $45m in funds from a Chinese Mexican businessman, Zhenli Ye Gon, who was under investigation for drug trafficking.

In a statement at the time, the justice department said of the case that Las Vegas Sands “has faced the very real possibility of a criminal case for breaching anti-money laundering laws”.

Bice accused Adelson’s lawyers of trying to spin the case as a paperwork error by a low-level employee when it was a deliberate attempt to deceive the authorities.

“They were structuring this to accommodate this patron who wanted to conceal the source of these funds from the government,” he said.

Adelson is scheduled to take the stand again on Monday.