{"id":2594,"date":"2010-03-17T12:27:04","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T20:27:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=2594"},"modified":"2010-03-18T11:35:55","modified_gmt":"2010-03-18T19:35:55","slug":"this-just-in-stanley-ho-is-mobbed-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/this-just-in-stanley-ho-is-mobbed-up\/","title":{"rendered":"This just in: Stanley Ho is mobbed up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"StanleyYeah, I know … no shit, Sherlock. With the notable exception of the Las Vegas Business Press<\/em>‘ Matt Ward<\/strong>, precious few journalists have been willing to come forward and report what everybody’s tacitly agreed, ever since the Macanese casino market was opened to Occidental operators: That ancient Sociedade de Jogos de Macau<\/strong> oligarch Stanley Ho<\/strong> is cozy with the Triads<\/a>, who conducted a reign of terror in Macao prior to the imposition of Chinese rule. A former casino regulator once asked me, with considerable dismay, how the Nevada Gaming Commission<\/strong> could approve MGM Mirage<\/strong>‘s purchase of a casino subconcession from such a sleazy figure. I was and remain stumped for an answer.<\/p>\n

Now the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement<\/strong> has officially stated<\/a> what the rest of us only implied or whispered. The 78-page report is hot off the Internet and I’ve not had a chance to more than glance at it yet, but it comes to some pretty damning conclusions in re<\/em> MGM as well as the Ho dynasty. What’s particularly intriguing is then-CEO J. Terrence Lanni<\/strong>‘s elliptical admission to Garden State regulators that Ho’s criminal ties<\/a> were more than a matter of perception and that, as paraphrased by Howard Stutz<\/strong>, “the company realized it would never get licensed in New Jersey if it maintained Stanley Ho as a business partner<\/em>.” Lanni probably didn’t help his cause by having a broadly grinning Stanley Ho front and center at every significant MGM Grand Macau<\/strong> event, doing his best impersonation of Banquo’s Ghost.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Since there would be no MGM Grand Macau if Pansy Ho<\/strong> hadn’t been given a 50\/50 piece of the action and if she hadn’t received startup capital from her father, the question of whether or not Stanley Ho is a “partner” in MGM’s operation there is semantic — at least until Ms. Ho pays off her loan from Dad. More pertinently, if Lanni realized MGM’s future in Atlantic City<\/strong> as a casino owner was toast, why did the company wait so long to put its half of Borgata<\/strong> on the market? By deferring the decision into the regime of successor Jim Murren<\/strong>, Lanni appears to have cost the company tens — if not hundreds — of millions of dollars by not getting out of Atlantic City while the getting was still good.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yeah, I know … no shit, Sherlock. With the notable exception of the Las Vegas Business Press‘ Matt Ward, precious few journalists have been willing to come forward and report what everybody’s tacitly agreed, ever since the Macanese casino market … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,28,22,62,11,110,25,61,87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2594"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2617,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594\/revisions\/2617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}