Deck chairs are being expediently rearranged on the S.S. Resorts World Las Vegas as she careens toward a date with reality. Actually, Genting Group was due for a reckoning today (Dec. 9) with the Nevada Gaming Control Board over a 31-page complaint that essentially accused Resorts World of being an outlaw property. Specifically, the indictment charges Resorts World with “a lack of control,” of knowingly allowing felons to gamble there and of flouting anti-money-laundering rules. It calls Resorts World “a culture where information of suspicious activity is, at a minimum, negligently disregarded or, at worst, willfully ignored for financial gain …” Strong stuff. Sounds like a place that should be run out of business. What are we thinking? This is Vegas, the original no-accountability zone.
Enter Genting’s white knight, former MGM Resorts International CEO Jim Murren, followed by a cohort of minions. These are the new brooms who are (it is implied) poised to sweep Resorts World clean. Something—maybe a lot of $omething$—motivated Murren to temporarily skip out on his duties as CEO of the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection and as chairman of the General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority in the United Arab Emirates. Murren told a local ‘newspaper’ that Genting had been courting him for two months to be their savior.
He brings loyal foot soldiers with him in the form of new Director Michelle DiTondo, late of MGM’s human resources department, and incoming CEO Alex Dixon, also a former MGM exec. Kinda cozy, no? (Former Nevada gaming regulator A.G. Burnett is also on the board now, to help keep everyone’s nose clean.) The part-time board of directors is completed by Genting President Kong Han Tan, one of the higher-ups who allowed the crisis at 3000 Las Vegas Boulevard to fester. Murren also dispensed some pro forma words of praise upon Resorts World prexy Peter LaVoie, who appears to be ticketed for demotion back to CFO. LaVoie is also a Murren acolyte (an important, new requisite at Resorts World) and clearly will be taken care of by The Boss.
Genting’s choice of redeemer is somewhat odd, given that Murren was passively up to his navel in misdeeds at MGM Grand back in 2019. No one is accusing Murren of active wrongdoing: Just of knowing what was going down under resort President Scott Sibella and turning a blind eye to it. Gambler R.J. Cipriani mailed Murren a letter warning him of “inappropriate and illegal behavior going on at MGM properties,” which sparked no action … not even from the Control Board, which was CC’d on the document, as was the FBI. (The feds seem to have taken the matter more seriously, as subsequent events bore out.) Not only was Murren told, MGM General Counsel John McManus explicitly acknowledged that he and others were aware of the accusations, and were taking action. Only they evidently didn’t. Sibella went from one executive sinecure at MGM to another at Resorts World and even got NGCB Chairman Kirk Hendrick and board member (and doofus-at-large) George Assad to take the extraordinary step of publicly declaring him “exonerated” of Cipriani’s allegations. Oops.
There’s going to be quite some kabuki theatre at the NGCB when it is asked to sign off on the new management at Resorts World. Doubtless Murren, Hendrick and Assad will all profess to be shocked—shocked!—by Sibella’s serial misdeeds, professing total ignorance. Don’t expect any hard questions to be posed of Murren. Instead, regulators will prostrate themselves at his feet, singing hosannas to his years of service in the public and private sectors, and lauding him as the Mr. Clean who is going to magically transform struggling Resorts World into The Greatest Gaming Juggernaut Ever Known To Mankind.
Murren has already laid the groundwork for this canonization. Snubbing the Las Vegas Review-Journal‘s gaming correspondents, he deigned to be interviewed by gossip columnist John Katsilometes. The latter was enchanted with tales of Resorts World LV as a second Mandalay Bay, and even with vague talk of further expansion, which Resorts World needs like Assad needs another hole in his head. The veteran CEO politely pushed his new Genting employers under the bus, saying “They were quite surprised and concerned about what has been happening here,” which confirms accounts that Genting took a hands-off approach to its Las Vegas Strip outpost. It adopted a let-Sibella-be-Sibella policy, with disastrous consequences.
“It’s a blank canvas, outside of the land it sits on. It owns over 40 acres of undeveloped land. There’s so much more that can be done there,” Murren said grandly of his new trust, taking the liberty of speaking for Dixon too. His other prescription for the north Strip is—wait for it—yet another sports arena. How about a baseball stadium? Murren’s a big fan of the sport and Sacramento A’s owner John Fisher could jilt Bally’s Corp. as heartlessly as he dumped Station Casinos. Or maybe yet a third potential NBA arena? As long as we’re deluding ourselves, let’s delude big.
What of new CEO Dixon? Genting had to dredge all the way down to Dubuque (a tertiary market at best) to find him, which tells you something of what a hot potato the Las Vegas job is. The man does have big-time experience … but it’s not auspicious. He opened the runaway-cost, $960 million MGM Springfield in Massachusetts, a Murren indulgence on which his successor has already taken a write-down and has even toyed with selling. Dixon followed that gig with a stint at Circus Circus, keeping the president’s chair warm until Phil Ruffin‘s people could take possession. As a former exec with both MGM and Caesars Entertainment, Dixon will keenly appreciate not having the one thing at Resorts World that the other two have in abundance: customer databases. Opening a resort in Las Vegas without a pre-sold audience is proving to be a fool’s errand nowadays, as Resorts World learned and now Fontainebleau is learning, not inexpensively.
So the stage is set for a command performance by the NGCB, which is getting played by Murren, even if it doesn’t know it yet—or ever will. They’re set to perform their usual capers, with Murren the puppet master pulling their strings as adeptly as he tugs those of Dixon, et. al. If Murren can manipulate the likes of Katsilometes, then the lesser intellects of Hendrick and Assad should be a cinch. Dance, Control Board monkeys, dance! Resorts World’s malefactions will be conveniently swept under the nearest rug and Sibella will surely be ostracized as the lone gunman, the ‘rogue’ actor who made all the bad things happen. Genting will also probably have its potential fine reduced severely, which seems to be the true endgame here. It ought to lose its Silver State license but that was never on the table, really.
Where the rubber is going to truly meet the road is in New York State, whose gaming regulators may be the ultimate audience for all this shadow puppetry. See, cries Genting! We’ve learned from our mistakes and will never do it again! Now give us that Class III casino license we want. Genting is downright desperate to have table games and Class III slots at Resorts World New York, but l’affaire Sibella has threatened to queer the pitch. Indeed, what if Empire State regulators start asking pesky questions like, What did Murren know and when did he know it? That would make a sticky wicket for Genting and its new stateside leadership.
Perhaps this whole imbroglio will give New York gambling overseers an excuse to have their cake and eat it too. There’s a loophole in the New York City megaresort legislation that would allow this. They could pick three resort developers, none of whom is Genting or MGM, thus giving the city five casinos, albeit with Genting and MGM Empire City as second-class gaming citizens, offering only video lottery terminals. There are many politicians involved and, as such, we wouldn’t put anything past them.