Time to repay debt for casino licence, court told
HK businessman seeks US$328 million from Las Vegas Sands for 'arranging' Macau permit
Las Vegas Sands owes a middleman for its gaming licence in Macau, which the casino operator's founder and chairman Sheldon Adelson called the "brass ring in the merry-go-round", according to a lawyer for Hong Kong businessman Richard Suen.
Opening statements started on Wednesday in state court in Las Vegas in a second trial over Suen's allegations that Adelson breached a 2001 agreement to pay him and his associates US$5 million and 2 per cent of the net income from the company's Macau casinos if it was awarded a permit.
Suen is seeking as much as US$328 million in damages.
Suen claims that meetings he arranged between Adelson and Chinese officials, including the mayor of Beijing and the vice-premier responsible for Hong Kong and Macau, were instrumental in leading Edmund Ho Hau-wah, the former chief executive of the Macau Special Administrative Region, to award the company a gaming licence in 2002.
Ho, according to Suen, initially had expressed misgivings about Las Vegas Sands' large-scale plans.
"This is a case about not paying your debts even if you have the means to do so," John O'Malley, a lawyer for Suen, told jurors. "Las Vegas Sands should pay a debt that now has been owing for many, many years."
At Suen's suggestion, before meeting with the Chinese officials in July 2001, Adelson called Republican lawmakers to "see what he could learn" about a pending US House of Representatives resolution to discourage the US Olympics Committee from voting for Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Olympics, O'Malley said in his opening statement.