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WASHINGTON, United States of America – Japanese gambling tycoon Kazuo Okada announced Thursday, February 21, he was resigning from the board of casino operator Wynn Resorts.
He made the announcement a day before the company’s board was expected to oust him.
Okada blasted Wynn’s founder and chief executive Steve Wynn for plotting to discredit him and force him out of the company, and repeated allegations made earlier about the misuse of company funds in its Macau venture.
“I no longer believe it is appropriate for me to serve on the Board of Directors of a company that is behaving in a manner that I deeply believe to be unethical,” Okada said in a statement.
The board “has refused my reasonable requests to promptly investigate what appears to me to be misconduct by Steve Wynn, and thus is under the dictatorship of Mr. Wynn and fails to fulfill its original function,” he added.
Wynn Resorts was scheduled to make a final decision in a special shareholder vote on Friday, February 22, on expelling Okada, who has been enmeshed in a battle with Steve Wynn since 2011.
Once close partners, with Okada having provided some $260 million to strengthen the company in the early 2000s, the two men have since fallen out over Wynn’s expansion.
Okada has accused the company of making a questionable $135 million donation to a university in Macau, where Wynn now has a profitable casino.
In the ensuing fight the Wynn board forcibly redeemed Okada’s 20% stake in Wynn Resorts at a 30% discount to market value. Okada said he will continue to fight that move in US courts.
Meanwhile Steve Wynn accused Okada of corrupt behavior in the Japanese businessman’s moves to get land in the Philippines for a casino to be controlled by Okada’s Universal Entertainment Corporation. Wynn said the move violated a no-competition pact agreed by Okada.
Okada-led Universal Entertainment is one of the 4 groups awarded a license to build and operate a gaming and entertainment complex at the sprawling 120-hectare complex in the reclaimed land in Manila Bay.
Okada’s $2 billion casino-hotel project will be completed by 2014.
Okada’s resignation from Wynn Resorts comes amid investigations in Nevada and Manila regarding the alleged illegal payments made by Okada’s companies to a former official of the Philippine Gaming Corp (Pagcor), the casino regulator.
The Nevada gaming regulator is probing the estimated US$30 million total money transfers from Okada’s companies in the US to the companies controlled by Rodolfo Soriano, a former Pagcor consultant.
Aside from the Nevada investigation — which was triggered by a series of Reuters reports in November — Philippine officials from the Department of Justice and the National Bureau of Investigation have also commenced their probe.
In a hearing at the House of Representatives, officials of Tiger Entertainment told Filipino lawmakers that the money transfers did not get the nod of the company board and that cases have been filed against the executives who authorized the remittances.
Current Pagcor officials said the franchise granted to the Okada group will be recalled if the allegations are proven true. – Rappler.com
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