It’s hard to say which is funnier or more hubristic: Sheldon Adelson‘s ongoing conceit that he could buy the presidency of the United States or his arrant naiveté, thinking that such ham-fisted involvement in the electoral process wouldn’t bring him under a media microscope. Trotting wife Dr. Miriam Adelson out for a lovey-dovey profile in Fortune isn’t going to change that. Reuters reminds its readers today that both the SEC and the Department of Justice are rooting around in Las Vegas Sands‘ business practices in Macao, a subject of which we’ll hear more as Adelson keeps dumping huge bags of money into the machinery of American politics. At the rate things are going, presidential candidates will soon be fielding queries about Sands China‘s erstwhile Triad involvement, and if Adelson and COO Michael Leven haven’t violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act when retaining the services of Macanese public servant Leonel Alves, they’ve skated right up to the edge of what’s permissible.
And the American news media doesn’t paint with a fine brush. If Adelson gets tarred, so does the casino industry in general, collateral damage that he’s evidently willing to risk. Then again, if you had the feds breathing down your neck, you’d want a puppet in the White House, wouldn’t you? Might be a good investment.
As a certain favorite blogger might say about a Macau VIP Room host being in OC, I’m shocked! Just absolutely shocked!!!!
In my experience, it’s pretty much de rigeur that Triads and other Asian OC members are heavily involved in gaming, just like it was when Vegas was built.
I can tell you in Southern California card rooms in the ’90s, there were loansharks from at least 5 different Asian countries working there, and we’re talking about the people who weren’t on the payroll.
At this point Shelly seems to be waiting to see which amazingly weak Republican POTUS candidate will emerge. When the smoke clears he will once again emerge as a major player in politics. Shelly certainly wants a Republican in charge of the Justice Department when the fecal matter hits the fan in regards to his bribing foreigners problem. A few million to the right candidate will lessen the inevitable hefty fine that Sands will have to pay…