Important update on 2024 commencement

Published April 15, 2024 Last Updated April 15, 2024, 3:47 pm

Procession at the 136th commencement at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA. May 10th, 2019. Photo by David Sprague

April 15, 2024

Dear USC community,

At this time of year, all talk about commencement should focus on the tremendous accomplishments of our 19,000-plus graduates, their friends, their families, and the staff and faculty who have been such a critical part of their journeys. As I walk around our campuses, there’s a palpable sense of excitement as soon-to-be-grads happily pose for pictures with friends in all their favorite sites. At the same time, we all recognize the strife, turbulence, and pain being experienced within our own community, and on so many other campuses and places around the world.

The main stage commencement at USC draws 65,000 people to the University Park Campus. As at all universities, this is the most exciting week and most important academic event of the year. We seek to produce a ceremony that unites our community and celebrates the hard work and achievements of graduates from all our schools and programs. Because of USC’s size and scale, commencement week is also the most challenging time of the year for our Department of Public Safety (DPS) personnel, who work tirelessly and effectively to keep our campuses the safe places that they are.

The Office of the Provost is involved in commencement in many ways, including the selection of our undergraduate valedictorian. Unfortunately, over the past several days, discussion relating to the selection of our valedictorian has taken on an alarming tenor. The intensity of feelings, fueled by both social media and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, has grown to include many voices outside of USC and has escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement. We cannot ignore the fact that similar risks have led to harassment and even violence at other campuses.

As always, and particularly when tensions are running so high across the world, we must prioritize the safety of our community. And as we do every year, we have been monitoring our commencement security needs based on all the information we have and the facts on the ground. Our DPS and expert campus safety team are uniquely prepared to evaluate potential threats, and we have consulted with them about the current situation, taking into account everything we know about our reality, as well as the unprecedented risks we are seeing at other campuses and across the world. We are resolute in our commitment to maintain and prioritize the existing safety and well-being of our USC community during the coming weeks, and allowing those attending commencement to focus on the celebration our graduates deserve.

After careful consideration, we have decided that our student valedictorian will not deliver a speech at commencement. While this is disappointing, tradition must give way to safety. This decision is not only necessary to maintain the safety of our campus and students, but is consistent with the fundamental legal obligation – including the expectations of federal regulators – that universities act to protect students and keep our campus community safe. It applies the same values and criteria that we have used in the past to guide our actions. In no way does it diminish the remarkable academic achievements of any student considered or selected for valedictorian. To be clear: this decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech. There is no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement. The issue here is how best to maintain campus security and safety, period.

Many have asked about the process for selecting the valedictorian. As has been true throughout USC’s history, the provost’s office managed the process. The first step was the appointment of faculty members to the Valedictorian and Salutatorian Selection Committee. This year the committee evaluated nearly 100 applications submitted from among the more than 200 graduating seniors who qualified for consideration based on their GPAs. The committee assessed each application based on various criteria – which did not include social media presence – and made a recommendation to me. Based on these faculty recommendations, I made the final decision.

This summer, I will work with the faculty to reconsider how best to recognize and celebrate the incredible achievements of our most outstanding undergraduate students. Many large universities like USC, for example, have moved away from selecting a single valedictorian from the many who are qualified, in favor of more inclusive processes and traditions.

At a time when there is so much discord in the world around us, it has never been more important for us to come together as a community, embrace our Unifying Values, and celebrate our individual and collective achievements. Commencement will be an opportunity for us to do just that, and President Folt and I very much look forward to seeing and celebrating with you there.

Sincerely,
Andrew T. Guzman
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

FAQ

How does USC work to keep commencement safe each year?

Our community can have confidence in the university’s preparations and security measures – both at commencement and every day on campus. USC is uniquely prepared and trained for these kinds of situations: we have one of the largest university public safety departments in the country, with more than 300 Department of Public Safety (DPS) employees, who will be fully deployed at commencement. The Los Angeles Police Department provides additional resources, as they are assigned to our University Park Campus (UPC) around the clock, and will provide additional assistance during commencement week.

We begin planning for every commencement from a fresh perspective, learning from previous years, but launching each planning cycle anew. When it comes to assessing risks, everything starts from scratch based on what we know – and we update our plans as new information comes in. This year we recognize we face a challenging geopolitical environment and we are tailoring our plans appropriately to ensure a safe and celebratory commencement for all Trojans and their families. 

USC will always put the safety of its students, faculty, staff and guests first.  

What happened to this year’s valedictorian speaking opportunity?

The main stage commencement at USC draws 65,000 people to University Park Campus. As at all universities, this is the most exciting week and the most important academic event of the year. We seek to produce a ceremony that unites our community and celebrates the hard work and achievements of graduates from all our schools and programs.

At this time of year, all talk about commencement should focus on the tremendous accomplishments of our 19,000-plus graduates, their friends, families, and the staff and faculty who have been such a critical part of their journeys. However, discussion about USC’s selection of the undergraduate valedictorian has taken on an alarming tenor. The intensity of feelings, fueled by both social media and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, has grown to include many voices outside of USC and has escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement.

As we do every year, we have been monitoring our commencement security needs based on all the information we have and the facts on the ground. Our DPS and expert campus safety team are uniquely prepared to evaluate potential threats and we have consulted with them about the current situation, taking into account everything we know about our reality as well as the unprecedented risks we are seeing at other campuses and across the world. After careful consideration, we have decided that our student valedictorian will not deliver a speech at commencement. While this is disappointing, tradition must give way to safety. This decision is not only necessary to maintain the safety of our campus and students, but is consistent with the fundamental legal obligation – including the expectations of federal regulators – that universities act to protect students and keep our campus community safe. It applies the same values and criteria that we have used in the past to guide our actions.

How is the USC valedictorian selected?

As has been true throughout USC’s history, the Provost’s Office managed the process. The first step was the appointment of faculty members to the Valedictorian and Salutatorian Selection Committee. This year the Committee evaluated the nearly 100 applicants who applied for consideration based on their perfect or near-perfect GPAs.

The Valedictorian and Salutatorian Selection Committee assessed each based on various academic criteria, including the breadth of the applicant‘s academic program and quality of their essay submission. The factors do not include social media activity. USC’s Provost then considered the Committee’s recommendations and made the final decision.

Do USC students have other opportunities to speak at events during commencement week?

During commencement week we are hosting 38 ceremonies, five celebrations, and 65 receptions featuring dozens of student speakers and performers. Additional details are available on USC’s Commencement website. 

What is USC’s policy on freedom of expression?

USC has long had established policies protecting the free speech rights and academic freedom of faculty and students. USC is committed to fostering a learning environment where free inquiry and expression are encouraged and celebrated and for which all its members share responsibility. Dissent — disagreement, a difference of opinion, or thinking differently from others — is an integral aspect of expression in higher education. Students and student organizations are free to support causes by all orderly means which do not disrupt or substantially interfere with university activities, as such disruption or interference violates the responsible exercise of free inquiry and expression.

Throughout the 2023-2024 academic year, our campuses have been open for numerous expressions of free speech by students and student groups, including rallies and demonstrations that run the entire spectrum of social and political opinion.

At USC, we always put the safety of our community first. The university’s default position is to mitigate safety risks whenever possible to allow expression to flourish. This work is led by a multi-disciplinary team that includes Student Life, the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, the Office of Threat Assessment, the Department of Public Safety, and others. In very rare cases, when our safety experts judge that security risks are too high, the university has a responsibility to act to protect its students, faculty, staff and guests.

You can find more information on our website about USC’s Policy on Free Speech.

All other related topics

Please refer to USC’s Network of Informational and Support Resources in Times of Conflict.

The USC valedictorian and two salutatorians were announced for 2024

The scholarly honorees were recognized at the USC Academic Honors Convocation on Tuesday night.

IMAGE: La CASA is hosting the 42nd Annual Latinx Graduation ceremony in-person. (Photo courtesy of La CASA)

By Nebai Esaias, Marco Haynes, Qais Adawiya and Solana EspinoApril 05, 2024 at 4:01 pm PDT

USC President Carol Folt named Asna Tabassum as valedictorian and both James McColl III and Lisa Tchitchkan salutatorians in the Town and Gown ballroom on April 2. The event recognizes the achievements of students and faculty at the university.

The valedictorian and salutatorian honors are determined by a combination of grade point average, involvement in the university and an interview process. This year 236 students were eligible to receive the honors at USC.

For a student to be eligible, they must have a grade point average of at least 3.980 or higher and complete the number of course units needed at USC. A student has to have complete knowledge of an academic program and contribute to university and community life. Also, they must submit an essay reflecting on their USC journey and be willing to accept the award. The student named valedictorian must have the ability to deliver a short commencement speech at graduation. Student candidates can apply and receive interviews, then will be selected from the Valedictorian and Salutatorian Selection Committee.

USC 2024 valedictorian, Asna Tabassum is a fourth-year student from Chino Hills, California. She will be graduating with a major in biomedical engineering and a minor in resistance to genocide which includes her studies on how technology, immigration and literacy play a role in the type of medical care people will receive.

After receiving the phone call from USC Provost Andrew T. Guzman, Tabassum felt thankful for being awarded valedictorian. “I think I had come to peace with the fact that whether I got it or whether I didn’t get it, I was really proud of how I had grown. So just ultimately, I was grateful.”

During her four years at USC, Tabassum did a lot of work for the community, first joining LACI (L.A. Community Impact) which works with nonprofit organizations around Los Angeles. Then she co-founded the club Blueprints for Pangaea with other fellow USC students. Its goal is to reallocate medical supplies from the Keck School of Medicine to areas in need around the world.

“Over the course of the next three years, I was in the club as president, I was able to send medical supplies to Ukraine, right after the war broke out, Turkey and Syria right after the earthquake, various different places around the world, which is really cool. Definitely the experience that I got the most out of and the I grew the most,” said Tabassum on the work she had achieved in the club.

She is also a student ambassador for Viterbi School of Engineering and part of the USC mobile clinic, which goes to homeless shelters in Skid Row conducting hypertension screenings.

Tabassum wanted to tell her parents about the honor with a cake that said “Val part two” on it. She was also valedictorian in high school but couldn’t celebrate it due to Covid-19.

“Of course, they were really happy and my mom started crying and my dad was like, I don’t get it, what’s on the cake?” said Tabassum.

image: Asna Tabassum and James McColl at Scholar Ceremony on April 2. (Photo courtesy of James McColl)

One of the salutatorians for the Class of 2024 was James McColl. McColl is a senior from Chicago with a computer science major and entrepreneurship minor. He was proud of himself and the experiences he underwent in order to get to this point.

“The title itself is great. But it’s really just the experiences that have led to this point, I would say, have meant the world,” said McColl.

McColl founded a club called USC Theater Showcase Group (TSG) during the first semester of his sophomore year. The club would meet up once a week to rehearse a group musical theater song in preparation for the end of their semester performance. The ticket money from that performance goes towards the Harmony Project, whose mission was to fund and provide arts programs for underfunded schools in the L.A. area. They raised about $5,000.

“It’s been great to see just the community that’s come out of that. People are super passionate about just performing and what we do, which is awesome,” said McColl.

McColl credits his collegiate accomplishments and opportunities to USC. “To become salutatorian, I think it takes a lot of hard work. It takes even being passionate about helping the USC community but it also just takes really loving the school and being excited about taking advantage of as many USC opportunities as you can.”

The second salutatorian for the class of 2024 was Lisa Tchitchkan. Tchitchkan, who’s originally from Belarus, was a human biology and psychology major but changed to a double major in neuroscience and Spanish because it was the perfect mix of everything she was looking for.

IMAGE: Salutatorian, Lisa Tchitchkan. (Photo courtesy of Lisa Tchitchkan)

“The reason why I really love those two [majors] is because I really like understanding how people essentially think – and not just how they think on an interpersonal basis, but also just the molecular reasons behind how people are perceiving what they’re perceiving, why people are the way they are, and I think science really allows you to explore that a little bit more,” Tchitchkan said.

Tchitchkan has two primary clubs that she has been involved with since she started at USC. Since her freshman year, Tchitchkan has been a part of USC InterAxon, a K through 12 outreach organization for local underserved schools.

“It’s really fun to essentially teach kids about not only its existence but also teach them that it’s possible to pursue neuroscience at a higher level. That it’s possible to get to graduate school, and go to medical school and [we] encourage these kids to follow whatever interests they like,” Tchitchkan said.

She also helped in the creation of the Trojan Health Interpretation Services (THIS). The club trains bilingual students in Spanish and English to become volunteer medical interpreters and help bridge the gap between English-speaking physicians and Spanish-speaking patients.

Tchitchkan reflected on her journey from where she first started at USC until now as a salutatorian.

“I think being a salutatorian now, and comparing that to where I was my freshman year when I was first admitted to USC, serves as an example that even though things might be tough when you first come to USC, it is possible to kind of still do well here because there’s so much support that USC gives you,” she said.

Tchitchkan’s two biggest supporters who she credits for her success are her parents. She has a strong relationship with her parents and said she feels thankful that they have been supportive of her throughout her life.

“They’ve supported me throughout this entire journey: encouraging me, especially during that freshman fall when I didn’t feel like I belonged here. They told me to believe in myself and essentially, make it through college and get to where I am now, which I’m very, very fortunate to be at,” Tchitchkan said.

The valedictorian and salutatorians will be recognized for their academic achievements, consideration, service and leadership during this year’s graduation alongside a speech by the valedictorian.

CORRECTION: The story has been updated to clarify that the valedictorian and salutatorian honors are not determined by the highest GPA but by a multitude of factors including involvement and a formal interview process. The story was also updated to reflect that James McColl founded the club Theatre Showcase Group, and the story has been updated to clarify where Lisa Tchitchkan is from originally.

https://www.uscannenbergmedia.com/2024/04/05/the-usc-valedictorian-and-two-salutatorians-were-announced-for-2024/

Miriam Adelson named executor of late husband Sheldon Adelson’s estate

From <Miriam Adelson named executor of late husband Sheldon Adelson's estate>

Dr. Miriam Adelson, widow of the late Sheldon Adelson, has been appointed executor of the former Las Vegas Sands CEO’s estate, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Miriam Adelson was appointed executor by Clark County District Court on June 3, the filing states, and she owns and has voting control over 398,956,751 shares, or 52.2 percent, of Las Vegas Sands Corp. outstanding common stock.

Under Wednesday’s closing stock price, the holdings would be worth around $22 billion.

Sheldon Adelson died Jan. 11 at his home in Malibu, California, at age 87 of complications related to treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Adelson founded and served as chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp., the world’s largest gaming corporation, from its inception in 1988. He led the company’s acquisition of the old Sands Hotel on the Strip, replaced it with The Venetian, Palazzo and Sands Expo and Convention Center, and expanded integrated resorts into Macao and Singapore.

The company announced in March that it was selling its Las Vegas assets to affiliates of Apollo Global Management Inc. and Vici Properties Inc. for $6.25 billion in order to focus on foreign investments and opportunities to develop new domestic markets.

Miriam Adelson, 75, will oversee trust funds benefiting the family, the filing said. She and Irvin Chafetz, a longtime business partner of Sheldon Adelson, are co-trustees to some of the other trust funds.

The filing noted that there were no amendments to trust oversight, other than the court’s appointment of her as the estate executor.

Miriam Adelson married Sheldon Adelson in 1991. They founded a Las Vegas drug abuse treatment and research clinic and a Summerlin private school in their names. Leaders in the American Jewish community, she and her husband also supported Birthright Israel, Holocaust memorial organizations, Jewish schools and Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. Through their foundations, they have contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to medical research and Jewish and Israeli causes.

She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018 from President Donald Trump, recognizing her work as a philanthropist and humanitarian, and as a physician specializing in the treatment of narcotic addiction, according to the White House.

shareholder of Las Vegas Sands Corp.

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.

From <https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/casinos-gaming/miriam-adelson-named-executor-of-late-husband-sheldon-adelsons-estate-2374686/> 

2020Jan RE LA | Sheldon Adelson’s Son graduates USC; buys bachelor 6.5 million starter house-bachelor pad

Sheldon Adelson's Son Buys $6.5 Million Starter House

Yahoo Finance 14 January 2020

Click here to read the full article.

22-year-old Adam Adelson graduated from USC last year and has wasted little time in transitioning to adult life, having just closed on a slick new L.A. bachelor pad. Tucked away in the hills above Brentwood’s Mandeville Canyon neighborhood, on the city’s aggressively expensive Westside, the light-filled contemporary home is quite grown-up and was sold by Mike Rubel, a managing partner at talent juggernaut CAA.

Adelson is the elder adopted son of casino mega-tycoon Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Dr. Miriam Adelson, a member of USC’s board of trustees and a licensed physician who specializes in drug addiction. The Adelson family’s net worth currently hovers around $42 billion, according to Forbes, making Sheldon one of the 25 richest people on the globe and President Trump’s most financially generous backer.

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The younger Adelson’s new property is completely walled and gated for privacy, of course, and offers a spacious motorcourt plus an attached two-car garage. Originally built in 1947, the house itself was designed in a rather ho-hum traditional architectural style; over the decades, however, the structure has undergone multiple remodels. Today, the property has a decided contemporary flair, with an open-concept floorplan, unvarnished hardwood floors and banks of glassy Fleetwood sliders.

Select amenities include a living room with gorgeous views of the surrounding treetops and the glittery L.A. skyline, a unique and stylishly curved fireplace that divides the living and formal dining areas, a wet bar and a light-filled kitchen with top-of-the-line Wolf and SubZero appliances. The master suite, tucked away in its own private wing, has an eye-popping wall of glass with verdant canyon views, while the attached bath has a large skylight and a built-in soaking tub for relaxation.

The .7-acre hillside lot is also admirably private, surrounded by mature evergreen trees and and lush hedges. The backyard additionally offers a P-shaped swimming pool and adjacent spa, secluded terraces for moments of quiet reflection and shaded patios for alfresco dining.

Nice as Adam Adelson’s first house may be, it’s little more than a shack compared to his family’s other homes. Back in 2015, his much older half-sister Yasmin Lukatz paid a brain-freezing $35.3 million in cash for a titanic compound up north in Atherton, Calif.; his father, meanwhile, has spent at least $70 million buying up eight homes in Malibu, Calif.

And Adelson grew up in his parents’ enormous main residence in Las Vegas, NV — a shopping mall-sized, 44,000 sq. ft. mega-mansion that sprawls across three parcels of land, contains 20 bathrooms and even has its own private waterpark.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sheldon-adelson-son-buys-6-231955311.html

2019FEB Macau the intercept - Sheldon Adelson Got a Surprise Gift in the Middle of the Government Shutdown

The GOP donor known for pushing to move the U.S. embassy in Israel has another major priority. And now he's 2-for-2.

Rachel M. Cohen , February 8 2019

• Move embassy to Jerusalem

• Trump administration issued the legal opinion against online gambling that Adelson had long sought.

• His mission dates back to 2011, when the Justice Department issued an opinion clarifying that the Wire Act, a 1961 federal statute designed to stop interstate betting, only applies to sports betting and no other forms of gambling

• [John] Boehner, [Harry] Reid, and Chaffetz

• Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling, and that same year, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, first introduced RAWA in Congress

• $83 million into Republican races in the 2016 cycle, including at least $20 million to elect Donald Trump.

•  an attorney, Darryl Nirenberg

• Jeff Sessions testified that he was “shocked” by the 2011 Justice Department opinion on online gaming

• 2015 when Chaffetz was serving as chair, but the proceedings backfired, with both Democrats and Republicans challenging the witness testimony and voicing opposition to the legislation

•  in 2017, Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa.,

• Blanche Lincoln, the former Democratic senator from Arkansas and a current lobbyist for Adelson’s Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling,

• Ron Reese, a spokesperson for Adelson

•  Charles Cooper, a former lobbyist for Adelson’s Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling, drafted a legal memo outlining why the 2011 Wire Act opinion was incorrect.

• AG JEF SESSION  hired CHARLES Cooper, his longtime friend, to personally represent him in the ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 electio

•  Steven Engel, an assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire Republican casino mogul, is associated with a singular political project: his long-running mission to uproot the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and plant it in Jerusalem instead.

But there’s a second project — lower profile, but no less of a passionate priority — that Adelson has long been gunning for, and that’s his war against online gambling. Adelson’s casino empire is comprised of brick-and-mortar establishments, to which online gambling is a major threat, but Adelson says he is at war with online gambling for the good of society: Gambling in casinos is one thing, but gambling online is a public health nightmare.

Adelson’s crusade against online gambling led to an attorney general recusal, tense debates within the Justice Department, and a standoff with the White House that culminated with an extraordinary reversal of policy in the middle of the government shutdown, when the Trump administration issued the legal opinion against online gambling that Adelson had long sought.

PAY TO PLAY - ROUND 1 2011 TO 2015

His mission dates back to 2011, when the Justice Department issued an opinion clarifying that the Wire Act, a 1961 federal statute designed to stop interstate betting, only applies to sports betting and no other forms of gambling.

The opinion paved the way for states to begin establishing legalized online gambling, so long as they did not create interstate sports betting arrangements. Today, Nevada, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania have all legalized online gambling, and 22 states have pending gambling legislation for a mix of casino, poker, and sports.

For years, Adelson has poured money into lobbying efforts to override the Justice Department opinion, corralling his closest congressional allies to pass legislation, bluntly called the Restoration of America’s Wire Act, or RAWA.

Adelson pledged to spend “whatever it takes” to ban online gambling, claiming his motives are purely altruistic, an effort to prevent the exploitation of children and the poor. “I am in favor of [gambling] as a form of entertainment, but I am not in favor of it exploiting the world’s most vulnerable people,” he said of his opposition. “I know I am a Republican, and I am not supposed to be socially sensitive, but I am very socially sensitive.”

In 2014, Adelson began bankrolling a new advocacy group called the Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling, and that same year, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, first introduced RAWA in Congress. Graham had not previously been a vocal opponent against online gaming, but in 2013, Adelson began significantly scaling up his political contributions to the South Carolina senator, even hosting a high-dollar fundraiser for Graham at his Las Vegas Venetian hotel. Also in 2014, Adelson emerged as the top GOP donor, giving $13.2 million to help Republicans take control of the Senate.

Despite all this, RAWA gained little traction. Republicans felt uncomfortable pushing for a new federal ban, and many Democrats were both interested in the new tax revenue streams that could be directed toward things like public education, and suspicious of helping a pet cause of Adelson.

“Adelson worked with [John] Boehner, [Harry] Reid, and Chaffetz for years trying to move legislation on this, and wasn’t able to get so much as even a hearing in the committees of jurisdiction,” said one Republican lobbyist, referring to the House and Senate judiciary committees. “He also tried to get [RAWA] inserted in must-pass omnibus legislation, but they could never get it through. Lawmakers knew it would look terrible to pass a bill that couldn’t even get a hearing in the committees of jurisdiction.”

RAWA did manage to get one House Oversight Committee hearing in 2015 when Chaffetz was serving as chair, but the proceedings backfired, with both Democrats and Republicans challenging the witness testimony and voicing opposition to the legislation.

Most Republicans opposed RAWA on the basis that it’s an intrusion on states’ rights. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., noted that if RAWA passed, it could pave the way for a national ban on firearms. Rep. Elijah Cummings,D-Md., came right out and said this whole debate was “about money” — namely the profit margins of brick-and-mortar casinos.

PAY TO PLAY ROUND 2 2016 - 2020…CHRONOLOGY

But Adelson was not deterred and poured more than $83 million into Republican races in the 2016 cycle, including at least $20 million to elect Donald Trump.

Shortly after the inauguration, at a small dinner at the White House, Adelson, accompanied by his wife, brought up two issues he said were extremely important to him: relocating the U.S Embassy in Israel, and online gambling, according to two gaming industry sources who learned of the dinner. A spokesperson for Adelson did not return request for comment.

In January 2017, during his Senate confirmation hearing, Jeff Sessions testified that he was “shocked” by the 2011 Justice Department opinion on online gaming, and would “revisit it” as attorney general. The question had been put to him by Graham.

A month later, a law firm headed by Charles Cooper, a former lobbyist for Adelson’s Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling, drafted a legal memo outlining why the 2011 Wire Act opinion was incorrect.

By April, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, an attorney, Darryl Nirenberg, who has worked as a registered lobbyist for Adelson for the past two decades, delivered the legal memo to a top-ranking official at the Justice Department.

By May, the department’s criminal division forwarded the Cooper memo to the Office of Legal Counsel and asked them to “reconsider” their 2011 stance.

Then came June, and Sessions hired Cooper, his longtime friend, to personally represent him in the ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election. By July, Sessions announced that he would recuse himself from all gambling matters, given the involvement of his own lawyer.

That left the online gambling issues under the jurisdiction of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, just like when Sessions recused himself from the special counsel probe into Russia, also for conflicts of interest.

According to people close to Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general wanted little to do with the gambling brouhaha.

“We’ve checked in over the last two years with Rod Rosenstein and he’s consistently said he has no interest in this issue, that there’s more important issues going on,” said one gaming industry executive who opposes the ban.

Adelson hadn’t fully given up on Congress, and in 2017, Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., tried to squeeze language banning online gambling into appropriations bills. He was unsuccessful, and Dent ultimately resigned from Congress in the spring of 2018.

But finally, Adelson found his golden opportunity, in the middle of the five-week government shutdown, which coincided with the transition between U.S. attorneys general. The new nominee to lead the Justice Department, William Barr, is a well-known, staunch advocate for states’ rights, and supporters of banning online gambling knew his confirmation would make overturning the 2011 opinion that much more difficult.

OPPOSITION BILL BARR- NO TO ADELSON

Barr made his opposition to revising the 2011 memo known during his prep time for his confirmation hearings, people familiar with the deliberations said, which is why Graham ended up not asking him any questions about it, unlike the questions Graham posed to Sessions during his 2017 hearings.

Asked whether the senator had advance knowledge of Barr’s stance on the question, Graham’s spokesperson did not respond directly to the question, and instead forwarded a public statement praising the new Wire Act policy.

Barr was asked about his views on enforcing marijuana laws, and he pledged in his confirmation hearing “to not go after companies” that had been relying on a separate Obama-era memo that said the Justice Department would not prosecute companies in states that legalized the drug. Sessions had overturned that memo at the start of 2018.

OVERTURNING THE 2011 MEMO DURING TRANSITION

Knowing both Barr’s position on the Wire Act memo and that Barr was planning to give a states’ rights defense of marijuana legalization at his confirmation hearing, Justice Department officials scrambled. Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker and other Justice officials met with their White House counterparts and described the plan to overturn the previous memo. White House officials, according to sources briefed on the meeting, advised caution, but ultimately left the decision to the Justice Department. The night before Barr’s hearing, the Justice Department circulated a new legal memo attributed to Steven Engel, an assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel. That document conspicuously lacked a signature, leading some to wonder if this was even real or just a draft.

The circulated opinion was dated November 2, 2018, but released publicly on January 14, raising further questions about whether it was a draft or was official.

The new memo insisted that most forms of online gambling are in fact illegal under the Wire Act, and that this new analysis “supersedes and replaces” the 2011 opinion on the subject.

Observers noted that much of the new opinion mirrored arguments and language reflected in the Cooper memo submitted to the Justice Department in 2017. On January 15, the agency circulated a memo to U.S attorneys, Assistant Attorneys General, and the FBI Director, announcing their new Wire Act position.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not return request for comment.

REACTIONS

ADELSON INC.

Blanche Lincoln, the former Democratic senator from Arkansas and a current lobbyist for Adelson’s Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling, praised the Justice Department for its new legal opinion. “Today’s landmark action to rightfully restore the Wire Act is a win for parents, children, and other vulnerable populations,” she said in a statement.

Adelson’s company, Las Vegas Sands, has paid Lincoln’s lobbying firm $820,000 since 2014, according to federal disclosures.

Ron Reese, a spokesperson for Adelson, did not answer questions about the casino mogul’s involvement with the new Justice Department opinion or his general reaction to it. In a statement to the Washington Post, Reese claimed that the new Justice Department opinion would have “little or no impact” on Las Vegas Sands.

Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii who sits on the Judiciary Committee, told The Intercept that the online gambling issue has not been a real focus in Congress. “I really don’t know who, besides Sheldon Adelson, was supporting the ban. It’s not as though it’s hit our radar screen. In my view, the world is in flames right now with so many other Trump [things],” she said. Hawaii and Utah are the only states that outright ban online gambling, and in 2015, Chaffetz tried to argue that a federal ban on online gambling would serve to further protect states like Utah and Hawaii.

REACTION FROM PRO-ONLINE

Sara Slane, a spokesperson for the American Gaming Association, released a statement calling the Justice Department’s new opinion “unfortunate” and said the federal law enforcement agency has provided no “compelling reason” to reverse their 2011 stance. Casino gaming, she added, “is one of the most highly regulated industries in the country” and her association encourages the Justice Department to investigate and shut down illegal and unregulated gambling operators.

Mark Brenner, the president of the Poker Alliance, an advocacy group that focuses on the rights and interests of poker players, told The Intercept in an email that his group strongly opposes the Justice Department’s decision. “Make no mistake, DOJ’s Wire Act reversal was a well-coordinated attack against the regulated iGaming, sports wagering, and poker industries carried out by Las Vegas special interests seeking to protect their own bottom line,” he said. “In doing so, they are trampling on states rights and individual rights, while undermining a growing bipartisan coalition of Governors and legislators across the country who are responsibly modernizing gaming in their respective states. Perhaps worst of all, this move will expose more innocent consumers to a gambling black market that is beyond the reach of law enforcement and regulators.”

The ultimate impact of the Justice Department memo is not yet clear, and some expect it will face further challenge in court. Online gambling supporters say that despite Barr’s stance on respecting states’ rights, if investors think they could potentially be at risk of criminal sanction, far fewer businesses will want to get involved.

“I think the gaming community is still uncertain about what this means, and the opinion is now open for interpretation for how far it reaches,” said Jennifer Roberts, the associate director of the International Center for Gaming Regulation at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “It’s pretty clear that according to this new opinion that it would affect interstate gaming, but what’s not clear is does it affect any activities intrastate?”

The North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries said the new Justice Department opinion would have a “substantially detrimental impact” on their lottery industry, which “currently provide[s] more than $23 billion in annual revenue to … good causes [governments] support within their jurisdictions, from education to the environment to economic development to senior citizen and veteran programs, and much more.”

On Tuesday, the state attorneys general in New Jersey and Pennsylvania sent a letter to the Justice Department, saying the new Wire Act opinion “undermines the values of federalism and reliance that our states count on.”

The attorneys general, Gurbir Grewal of New Jersey and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, urged the department to withdraw the opinion or guarantee that the Justice Department “will not bring enforcement actions against companies in our states that are acting lawfully under state statutes.”

They also filed Freedom of Information Act requests for, among other things, any information that relates to outside lobbying efforts to influence the Justice  Department’s opinion on this issue. The FOIA request specifically names the Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling, Charles Cooper, Darryl Nirenberg, Blanche Lincoln, the Lincoln Group, and Sheldon Adelson.

From <https://theintercept.com/2019/02/08/sheldon-adelson-online-gambling/> 

Three philanthropists named to USC Board of Trustees

October 06, 2016

Contact: Eddie North-Hager at (213) 220-1806 or edwardnh@usc.edu

Three accomplished women dedicated to improving the lives of others have been named as members of the USC Board of Trustees: Miriam Adelson, Suzanne Dworak-Peck ’65 MSW ’67 and Claude Mann. All were elected Oct. 5.

Miriam Adelson

Miriam Adelson is a dedicated researcher, physician and expert in drug addiction. An internist with experience in emergency medicine, she founded, sponsors and is chairman of the board of two major drug abuse treatment and research centers, one in Las Vegas and one in Tel Aviv, Israel. She is also the medical director of the Las Vegas center.

“Miriam Adelson has been a tireless leader in improving the health and wellbeing of others through groundbreaking research and treatment, and her tremendous drive and passion are matched by her extraordinary creativity and kindness,” said USC President C. L. Max Nikias. “USC welcomes her thoughtful perspective as a physician and researcher, and I look forward to her vital contributions to our board.”

Born in Tel Aviv and raised in Haifa, Adelson moved to the United States in 1986 to become an associate physician at Rockefeller University in New York, where she studied addiction and the spread of HIV among drug addicts. Taking what she learned from her research and treating patients, she founded a clinic at Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center in 1994, instituting a successful program using methadone, a synthetic opiate that prevents withdrawal symptoms without causing patients to get high. She opened a sister clinic in Las Vegas, where she and her husband live, in 2000. Through her clinics, she treats adults and teens who are grappling with painkiller and opiate addiction, helping them to re-establish themselves in school and ultimately lead normal lives.

Adelson earned her bachelor of science degree in microbiology and genetics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before pursuing her medical degree at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine, where she graduated magna cum laude.

She and her husband, Sheldon G. Adelson, focus their philanthropy through two foundations: the Adelson Family Foundation, which primarily supports programs that benefit Israel and the Jewish people; and the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation, which advances research in oncology, neurology and the biology of addictive diseases. Among the causes they support: Israel’s Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem; Taglit-Birthright Israel, which takes young Jews on trips to Israel; Ariel University on the West Bank; and the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Suzanne Dworak-Peck

A social work practitioner and leader in the field for more than 40 years, Suzanne Dworak-Peck has dedicated her life to improving the lives of people and families in the most vulnerable and underserved populations. She made a gift of $60 million to name and endow the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, in September.

“Suzanne Dworak-Peck is a visionary philanthropist who is guided by an unwavering commitment to social justice, and to our students who are following in her footsteps,” Nikias said. “Mrs. Dworak-Peck lives her life according to the highest ideals, and our community will benefit tremendously from her exceptional experience, leadership, and courage.”

Dworak-Peck has served as president of both the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and the organization’s California chapter. During her tenure, she strengthened the NASW’s role in international social work, particularly its relationship with the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW), an organization representing social workers in more than 100 countries. She also served as president of that organization and is currently its first, and only, ambassador.

She founded the NASW Communications Network Inc., which provided the media and entertainment industries with centralized information and resources for social issues and recognized outstanding portrayals of social workers. She also sits on the board of the California Social Welfare Archives (CSWA), which at USC maintains one of the most extensive and complete collections of California social welfare history.

Dworak-Peck currently serves as chair of the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work Board of Councilors. Among her many honors are being named Social Work Pioneer by the NASW and Social Worker of the Year by the NASW-California Chapter, as well as receiving the NASW Foundation’s first International Rhoda G. Sarnat Award for advancing the public image of social work. Also, the CSWA awarded her its George D. Nickel Award for Outstanding Professional Services by a Social Worker. In 2016, the USC Alumni Association recognized her exceptional commitment to USC and outstanding contributions to the field of social work with an Alumni Merit Award. That same year, the IFSW recognized her contributions to international social work.

Claude Mann

Claude Mann, elected a life trustee, is the executive vice president of gifting and development for the Alfred Mann Foundation, her late husband’s charitable arm.

“Claude Mann is a renowned humanitarian, and a longstanding friend to USC,” Nikias said. “She is building on her family’s already-extraordinary philanthropic legacy, and brings her unbounded passion and dedication to the cause of improving human health around the world. In USC, she has found the perfect partner.”

Claude Mann was born during World War II in a Berlin concentration camp after her parents became political prisoners. At the end of the war, her parents escaped and returned to their native France, where Mann lived in a convent’s boarding school. She later studied arts, philosophy and psychology at La Sorbonne.

She and her parents moved to Morocco, where she worked for Siemens AG until 1972, when she moved to the United States. She went into the restaurant business, owning two establishments in the San Fernando Valley: L’Affair in Mission Hills and Le Triumph in Granada Hills.

She leads fundraising efforts for the Alfred Mann Foundation, which serves as a nonprofit research organization devoted to the development of advanced medical products.

Mann has been honored with the Women of Achievement Award from the Women of Sheba, the Woman of Valor Award from the Women’s International Zionist Organization and the Larry King Heart Award. She serves on the boards of numerous organizations including the Alfred Mann Institute at the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology, the Los Angeles Opera and the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation.

Her late husband served on the USC Board of Trustees from 1998 until his passing in 2016. He was a humanitarian and entrepreneur who founded 17 companies in the aerospace and biomedical technology industries.

He donated more than $174 million to advance USC’s contributions to human health, establishing the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. The institute invests funds to accelerate the commercialization of bioengineering or medical inventions.

###

From <https://today.usc.edu/three-philanthropists-named-to-usc-board-of-trustees/>

Jennifer Robison writes for CJR about how, even as the #MeToo movement gained momentum, a culture of sexual harassment prevailed at the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper, which was acquired in 2015 by billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Meanwhile, the editor of The Nevada Independent wrote an editorial saying he wanted to publish Robison’s reporting, but couldn’t take the risk that Adelson might sue.

From <https://www.cjr.org/analysis/manafort-mueller-redacted-document-ukraine.php> 

Adelson's LV Review-JOurnal The newspaper that #MeToo missed

At Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Review-Journal, allegations of misconduct were met with little change—and a big payout for the man in charge

January 9, 2019 By Jennifer Robison

Even for a town like Las Vegas, April 6, 2016, was a big night. The city was gathering to celebrate the opening of the T-Mobile Arena, a $375 million building on the south end of the Strip that had been three years in the making. It was a glitzy Vegas bash. The Killers, a hometown alt-rock band, performed. Fireworks and a laser show lit up the sky. In a private box with two bars, alcohol flowed.

Inside were executives and editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada’s largest media outlet. In addition to a daily newspaper, the Review-Journal produces a number of niche publications, including Luxury Las Vegas, a glossy monthly, and El Tiempo, a weekly Spanish-language newspaper. Managers from some of those titles were at the party, too.

For the Review-Journal, the celebration was a coming out of sorts. Craig Moon, 68, had been publisher of the Review-Journal for less than three months. At his side was his longtime friend and lieutenant, Keith Moyer, 66, a former Gannett and McClatchy executive. Moon had lured Moyer out of a quiet academic life in Minnesota two months earlier to become editor in chief. Also present was Chris Blaser, 57, a former San Francisco Chronicle executive who had just taken over the Review-Journal’s circulation operation as vice president of audience.

Review-Journal employees who were at the party remember a boisterous atmosphere—and a high-profile networking opportunity to solicit ads promoting upcoming arena events: a Guns ‘N’ Roses reunion, a George Strait residency, and the inaugural season of a new National Hockey League team, the Vegas Golden Knights. But before long, Moyer killed some of the buzz.

Moyer, with a gray goatee and mustache, spotted Blaser talking to Leslie Frisbee, the editor in chief of Luxury Las Vegas. As the two leaned in to talk, Moyer called out to them. They turned in his direction, and he snapped a photo with his cellphone.

The picture shows Frisbee—a 49-year-old former health and fitness journalist with cropped blonde hair and green eyes—dressed in a long sleeveless burgundy gown, her back to Moyer, looking over her shoulder and smiling. Blaser, a compact, graying bachelor, peeks out from behind her in a blue-checked button-down. His right arm reaches around her lower back and his left hand rests on her knee. Moyer texted the photo to Blaser. “Here’s something you can jerk off to later,” Moyer said to anyone who was listening, according to a person who heard the comment. The party guest remembers that Blaser laughed and showed off Moyer’s text, which had the same message, to others nearby.

In the following days, the photo would rip through the paper’s offices, as staffers shared it via text. Frisbee and Blaser began dating, and would go on to see each other for several months. Moon took to commenting on Frisbee’s looks, saying that she was the “sexiest” and “best-looking” woman at a work event, or that she looked “really sexy in that outfit,” according to Marsala Rypka, a writer who freelanced for Luxury Las Vegas, and in whom Frisbee confided at the time the statements were made. Frisbee told Rypka that Moon kissed Frisbee unsolicited on the lips. “It took her by surprise,” Rypka told me. Over time, Moon’s behavior “was really uncomfortable,” Rypka said Frisbee told her. “It was blatant, and it was very, very awkward.”

In June 2017, Frisbee quit. She declined to discuss her experience, citing a nondisclosure agreement she’d signed. But more than 15 other current and former Review-Journal employees and vendors, in interviews conducted over 14 months, said that Moyer’s “jerk off” comment—he, too, declined to speak for this story, as did Moon—was among a number of inappropriate behaviors by a group of men who worked together off and on at various media companies over several decades and took over the Las Vegas media world.

Between April 2017 and February 2018, the Review-Journal was the subject of at least three harassment and discrimination filings with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; one with the Nevada Equal Rights Commission; at least two payouts involving nondisclosure agreements, including Frisbee’s; allegations of a hostile work environment (in an unemployment benefits filing) through the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation; and internal complaints to the paper’s human resources department by Frisbee and other staff members who claimed that the office atmosphere was hostile and abusive.

There were a number of inappropriate behaviors by a group of men who worked together off and on at various media companies over several decades and took over the Las Vegas media world.

The allegations—which a lawyer for Moyer, Blaser, and their colleague Frank Vega said they “categorically deny”—came as the #MeToo movement was exploding. That most of the people involved remain in their positions—one was promoted—even in light of some of the behaviors alleged by women at the Review-Journal, can be traced back to the paper’s change in leadership, about three years ago, as part of a bizarre, secretive sale.

Late in the afternoon of December 10, 2015, at the offices of the Review-Journal, Jason Taylor, who had been publisher for just five months, gathered employees for a town hall meeting inside a cavernous brick outbuilding at the edge of the paper’s four-acre campus downtown. I was part of that meeting, as a staff reporter closing in on 11 years covering business and economics. Taylor announced that the Review-Journal had been sold for $140 million. The contract stipulated that GateHouse Media, the seller, never publicly identify the buyer, whom Taylor identified as a newly incorporated company in Delaware called News + Media Capital Group LLC.

After Taylor finished speaking, a man in a dark-gray suit introduced himself as News + Media’s manager. Named Michael Schroeder, he had previously been the publisher of three small community papers in Connecticut. He told the crowd that the new owners were excited to oversee the Review-Journal and that they had “expertise in the media industry.” He refused to go beyond that. After Schroeder’s talk, Michael Hengel, the editor in chief, stood and asked who the investors were. Schroeder shut him down. “They just want you to focus on your jobs, and not worry about who they are or what they do,” Schroeder said. Employees erupted in gasps and incredulous laughs.

Despite the cloak that had been thrown over the investors’ identities, there was little newsroom debate over the likeliest suspect: Sheldon Adelson, an 85-year-old casino magnate and Republican mega-donor. Over the course of his career, he had parlayed $500 million he’d made from the sale of COMDEX, a computer trade show, into the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, a publicly-traded gaming empire that spans from The Venetian and Palazzo resorts on the Las Vegas Strip to identical hotel-casinos in Singapore and Macau.

Adelson had the money to overpay and he’d expressed interest in acquiring news outlets before. He had also attempted for years to control how reporters wrote about him. To the publishers of the Review-Journal, Adelson had made near-constant complaints about coverage of everything from gaming to campaign finance reform. Once, he called them to express discontent over an illustration that depicted him with a Mike Tyson-style face tattoo—a tongue-in-cheek take that accompanied a column in which Howard Stutz, a gaming reporter, likened Adelson’s legal skirmishes to Hangover sequels.

Adelson’s representatives—and even Adelson himself—denied for days that he’d bought the paper. But on December 16, thanks to tips from anonymous sources, the Review-Journal ran a story revealing that Patrick Dumont, Adelson’s son-in-law, had made the purchase in a deal that Adelson funded.

Nevertheless, some employees were hopeful. The Adelsons had a reputation for treating workers well at the Las Vegas Sands. Within weeks, the Review-Journal’s health insurance plan improved dramatically, and many staffers thought the upgraded coverage was a harbinger of better working conditions overall. Adelson, we learned, prided himself on how he treated employees. “There’s a reason why we’re the only property on the strip that’s non-union,” he told The Guardian. “We treat our employees so well.”

As change swept through the newspaper’s offices, however, at least for some on staff, the reality proved to be dramatically different.

At first, the Adelsons let Taylor, GateHouse’s president of Western operations, keep his job as the Review-Journal’s publisher. But the arrangement wouldn’t last. Taylor seemed sympathetic to newsroom concerns about editorial independence. He signed off on a lengthy statement written by editors and reporters disclosing the Adelson family’s business interests, and he approved its daily placement on page three. On the Review-Journal’s website, he allowed a detailed story about a January 2016 Nevada Supreme Court hearing involving a $115 million judgment against the Las Vegas Sands that had been awarded to a former Sands adviser. Taylor was out within weeks.

On January 28, 2016, in a hastily arranged all-hands meeting attended by more than 100 employees in the paper’s cafeteria, the staff met the new publisher, Craig Moon. Moon began his first speech in the job with a diatribe against sale-related newsroom leaks to the national media. Talking vaguely about coming changes, he said that he’d only read three days’ worth of papers before taking the position. “I’m going to see if I can get my head around what is going on and how we can move this forward,” he continued. He ended with a pronouncement: “If you’re not enjoying your job, you probably shouldn’t work here.” (Like numerous other employees in the room, I openly recorded the meeting on my phone.)

By some appearances, Moon was a marquee hire. He had led USA Today until 2009—when he retired, at 58, with a pension valued at more than $2 million, according to a 2008 Gannett filing with the SEC, and an overall retirement package worth $3.7 million, according to an Associated Press report. He settled in Tennessee with his wife, Patty, and their four daughters and son, and started a newspaper consulting business called Newsman LLC.

On February 3, 2016, in a meeting with about 25 reporters and editors (which I also recorded), he insisted that he didn’t routinely talk to the Adelson family about the paper’s content, but it was clear that he’d come into the job with marching orders. Over dinners with the Adelson family, he said, he’d quickly grown to “personally like them very much.” In the meeting, he told us that his political views were conservative, and mostly aligned with those of the Adelsons. He complained about “East Coast” media coverage of the sale. “My relationship is with the family, so that’s who I work with,” he said.

He repeated his suggestion that unhappy employees find other jobs. “If you come to work and you hate the people who own this paper, then leave,” he said. “That’s up to you guys. You guys figure it out. I want to have a good relationship with you guys, but if you aren’t having fun, go do something else.”

At Moon’s side for that meeting was a new face: Frank Vega, a self-described bulldog with a penchant for khaki shorts and golf sweaters. Vega said that he and Moon had known each other for 40 years and that he’d be working at the Review-Journal as a publisher’s consultant for a few months, commuting back and forth between Las Vegas and Florida, where he lived full-time.

Under Moon and Vega’s leadership, the disclosure statement disappeared from page three. Moon ordered that the editorial page reverse long-held positions to favor Adelson family priorities. Vega told staffers about a nickname he’d earned in the nineties as CEO of the Detroit Newspaper Agency: “Darth Vega.”

Moon and Vega would soon enlist the help of Moyer, another longtime friend and Gannett associate, as editor in chief. Moyer first met the staff on February 5th, at a meeting in the Review-Journal’s courtyard. Married with two grown children, Moyer seemed more upbeat than Moon. He talked of the paper’s “rich history of being a really good Nevada newspaper” and promised to realize even greater potential. “We’re going to be in a unique position because of our ownership, their ability to support us financially, and their desire for a first-rate regional newspaper,” he said. “I think they understand and agree that more resources are going to be needed to make that happen.”

But Moyer soon compelled a court reporter to include a series of Adelson-friendly talking points in an article on a wrongful termination lawsuit against the Las Vegas Sands. When a motion in that case went for the plaintiff, Moyer killed a story on the subject. John L. Smith—a Review-Journal opinion columnist who says Adelson sued him into bankruptcy “over a brief passage” in his book, Sharks in the Desert: The Founding Fathers and Current Kings of Las Vegas (2005)—was banned from covering Adelson, and then from writing about Steve Wynn, a casino mogul and Adelson’s chief rival. (Adelson’s case against Smith had been dismissed “with prejudice,” meaning that it could never again be brought before the court.) Now Smith, not wanting to accept the limits imposed on his coverage of two of the state’s most powerful men, decided to quit.

In the maze of sales offices down the hall from the newsroom, an entirely different set of problems was emerging. Around the time Leslie Frisbee started dating Chris Blaser, she became a target of unwanted attention from other colleagues.

Though Frisbee wouldn’t discuss her case with me, a letter she sent to advertising executives at the paperdescribes her experience. Frisbee wrote that Moon kissed her on the lips at “more than a dozen public work-related events.” She also recounted that male executives, including Moon and Blaser, “constantly and graphically discussed intimate details” of her relationship with Blaser. She referred to the T-Mobile arena party, including Moyer’s comment, writing, “I’ve never been so embarrassed in a professional setting.”

Frisbee also wrote that, in September 2016, Moyer asked her who she planned to take as her guest to the Nevada Press Association Awards. She named a male business associate. According to her letter, Moyer responded, “Well, that has to be better than having sex with Blaser.”

In April 2017, Frisbee filed a claim with the Nevada Equal Rights Commission, citing inappropriate workplace treatment. A month later, she approached the paper’s human resources department with a formal complaint letter about her experience. The paper sought legal counsel to investigate Frisbee’s claims. That June, the Review-Journal offered Frisbee a payout. Her resignation followed.

I’ve never been so embarrassed in a professional setting, she said.

The settlement marked the end of Frisbee’s case, and the paper required managers to undergo harassment training online. But other claims of sexual misconduct began to surface. Maria Cristina Matta-Caro, the publisher of El Tiempo, submitted a formal complaint to the Nevada Equal Rights Commission. “I was subjected to unwelcomed sexual comments, hugging, and other touching in the workplace by Managers within the Company,” she wrote in the complaint. Matta-Caro alleged that, at a work-related party, Blaser told her that she “looks like a supermodel, not a publisher” and asked if she were lonely, or where her boyfriend was.

Employees recalled that Moon and Blaser would look at profiles of women on Match.com and discuss them in vulgar terms. “Craig had a 30-inch monitor in his office, and they would sit in his office, talk about the women, and weigh them on a masturbation scale,” a former employee who overheard the talk “frequently” between April 2017 and September 2017 told me. “Everyone down the hall in the accounting offices could hear those conversations.”

Matta-Caro said that Cindy Meyers, the Review-Journal’s benefits manager, began sending women home for dressing in clothes that were “tight in the waist” or otherwise objectionable—a level of zealous wardrobe policing that female employees never experienced when wearing the same clothes before. In a June 2017 managers’ meeting, Matta-Caro recalled, Meyers suggested that women were at fault for dressing in a way that attracted attention, saying that women “needed to watch out for provocative outfits, and that underwear would be mandatory because a lot of women in the office were not wearing underwear.” Moon, who was seated at the end of a table, said that the paper “shouldn’t have to tell women how to dress.” (Meyers did not respond to a request for comment.)

Soon, a new dress code emailed to staff noted that “undergarments should be worn daily.”

In early 2018, three women, including Matta-Caro, filed complaints against the Review-Journal with the EEOC. In addition to harassment, Matta-Caro’s filing, submitted in February, cited sex-based discrimination in her salary and unfair treatment based on her ethnicity.

Matta-Caro said that she told EEOC investigators that she earned a salary of $60,000 a year while male publication directors—including first-time directors with little to no prior newspaper leadership experience—earned at least $100,000. In the complaint, she alleged that the paper had reporters and assistants earning a higher salary than she did.

She asked the Review-Journal’s human resources department to explain her pay disparity, she told the EEOC, but no one would. She also alleged that she asked Moon for a raise, and he responded by asking about her boyfriend because, he told her, he thought her boyfriend had money. After that, she was harassed by senior-level colleagues and was “held to additional requirements for access to benefits that other similarly situated executives not of my protected group are not subjected to.” (Neither Moon nor the Review-Journal has responded to the EEOC about this case.)

The same month, two other women submitted EEOC charges against the Review-Journal about unequal pay. The women, who both worked in sales, alleged in their filings that their base salaries—about $35,000 per year—were approximately half those of male colleagues with less experience. In the fall of 2017, their commission rates were reduced suddenly; when they complained, they alleged, they were fired, with no severance and only seven days of health coverage.

According to EEOC filings, the saleswomen were told that they were being let go because their positions were being eliminated. But not long after they packed their belongings, they saw that the Review-Journal was advertising openings for their jobs. The women shared with me more than a dozen screenshots of job postings online—which, they said, disappeared in January, after they first approached the EEOC. Wrote one of the women in her EEOC filing: “I was told that my discharge was due to position elimination; however, I am aware that a younger candidate, not of my protected class, was hired in place of me.” (In March, executives at the Review-Journal told the EEOC that they disputed the charges brought by the two saleswomen. Both women then challenged the paper’s denials through the EEOC, which continues to investigate; in July, a retaliation claim was added.)

Beyond unequal pay, there came allegations of harassment based on race. Matta-Caro—originally from Colombia and the only minority among the company’s directors and publishers—told the EEOC that Vega, Moon, and Blaser taunted her and a colleague about their immigration status. Both were legal US residents with green cards. In June 2017, Matta-Caro asked Moon and Vega if she and a graphic designer could borrow $1,000 to help cover the cost of the process to become full citizens. The loan could be paid back out of their wages, Matta-Caro suggested—an arrangement similar to the one that the Review-Journal uses to help employees buy personal computers. Moon asked what would happen if he said no. According to Matta-Caro, Vega turned to Moon and Blaser, who was sitting in on the meeting, and said, “They’re illegal immigrants. Will they have to leave?” In response, she said, the three men laughed.

Matta-Caro said she told the men that she and the colleague, a graphic designer, were legal residents, which meant that they wouldn’t have to “go back.” They simply wanted to become US citizens. (The graphic designer, who quit the Review-Journal in January 2018, asked not to be named, as she is going through the citizenship process with her new employer.)

It is my duty to draw a line and speak up for myself and the rest of the people who are in the same or similar situations and are afraid of speaking up, she said.

Matta-Caro, who still works for El Tiempo and is in her eighth year with the Review-Journal, has asked for back pay and for the EEOC to demand that the paper stop harassment and discrimination at the company. Her case is still pending. “It is my duty to draw a line and speak up for myself and the rest of the people who are in the same or similar situations and are afraid of speaking up,” she told me. “Because they need that job and they want to convince themselves that they need to be grateful for it, even though they are being mistreated.”

Among the reporters who covered the paper’s sale, I was the last to leave. I gave notice in May 2016 and moved to San Francisco to start a new career in corporate public relations. I left on good terms—a month before, Moyer had given me a ten percent raise. I stayed in touch with longtime friends and associates both in the newsroom and in the sales office.

In October 2017, days after exposés on Harvey Weinstein elevated the #MeToo movement to national prominence, my phone screen lit up. A former colleague had sent a curious text message: “Do people still call you as a reporter?”

I arranged a time to talk and soon began reaching out to more sources, all of whom described a workplace they saw as toxic. I was told that, in December 2017, in what may have been a bid to involve the Adelson family in the staff’s complaints, someone claiming to be a former employee sent an anonymous email to Miriam Adelson, Sheldon’s wife, and to Patrick Dumont, his son-in-law, outlining some of the alleged misconduct. But nothing much seemed to come of that tip at the time: employees heard of no investigation, and there were no masthead changes as a result.

Anna Park, an EEOC attorney, told me that the agency could neither confirm nor deny investigations unless they result in litigation. But I learned that the agency submitted the women’s charges to the Review-Journal in February—just as the paper was turning up heat on Steve Wynn with a series of pieces detailing his inappropriate behavior toward female employees at Wynn Resorts Ltd.

Early last year, I pitched this story to the Nevada Independent, a small online news startup in Las Vegas. The Independent agreed to consider publishing my piece if I could include responses from the Adelsons and the paper’s executives. But when I called for statements, what followed was a months-long series of unreturned phone calls, ignored emails, disregarded text messages, refusals to comment and, finally, threats of legal action.

First reached in February 2018 by phone and asked to comment on the filings and payouts, Moyer told me that he was “recovering from cancer surgery and not in a frame of mind to talk about this with you right now.” He said that he would have Cook respond “if he wants to talk to you.” Cook never called. When I tried Moon, he said that he couldn’t talk because he was in the middle of dinner. He did not return repeated phone calls or texts throughout the rest of February. Nor did Kim Taormina, the Review-Journal’s new director of human resources.

On March 1, I texted and emailed Ronald Reese, a spokesperson for Las Vegas Sands, to request a comment from the Adelson family on the EEOC filings and legal settlements. Reese didn’t provide a comment, but on March 8, multiple Review-Journal employees told me that Stanley Weiner, a labor attorney with the law firm of Jones Day, had begun an internal investigation into allegations of inappropriate behavior. Weiner also represented the Las Vegas Sands in labor-related cases. He did not return a phone call seeking comment. On March 15, I emailed Reese and Dumont again; neither responded.

On March 26, a story in the Review-Journal reported that Moon, who had nearly a year left on his contract, had decided to retire. He was quoted as saying, “I’m ready to return home to Tennessee to spend more time with my family and pursue endeavors there.” In his place, Moyer was promoted to publisher.

I finally reached Taormina in mid-May. When I asked about the EEOC filings and allegations against the paper’s leadership team, she refused to comment, saying repeatedly, “I don’t want to speak to you about that.” When I pressed, inquiring if someone else at the Review-Journal might offer a formal comment, Taormina said that she’d have someone return my call. No one ever did.

Around the same time, I emailed and texted Moon, Moyer, Vega, and Blaser, asking detailed questions about the allegations that had been made against them. To more than half a dozen follow-up emails and texts, Moon never responded. Moyer, Vega, and Blaser hired an attorney through whom they “categorically” denied the claims in an “off-the-record” statement that was “not for publication.” The attorney, Ryan Stonerock of Harder LLP in Los Angeles, blamed “disgruntled employees” who were “terminated” and “made no allegations whatsoever” until they learned that they were being let go.

Stonerock also referred to the internal investigation in March 2018 and said that it did not “result in any adverse actions” against his clients; instead, Moyer was promoted and Vega and Blaser retained their positions. Asked to provide a copy of the final report, Stonerock declined, citing employee privacy laws. He did not respond to a subsequent request for a redacted version that blacked out identifying or sensitive information.

Stonerock—whose firm won a $140 million judgment for Hulk Hogan, the professional wrestler, in a privacy case against Gawker, and represented Weinstein in his $50 million threat to sue The New York Times—also told me twice that I and the Nevada Independent would be sued if we published any “false and defamatory” statements.

Finally, in May, through Reese, the Adelson family declined to comment on a detailed 27-point list of the allegations in this story; why Moon retired with nearly a year left on his contract; when the family learned of settlements and EEOC complaints involving the paper; whether they hired an outside attorney to investigate the charges; and if they would share the results of such an investigation.

In August, after months of consulting with attorneys about Stonerock’s threat letter and the Adelsons’ denials, the Nevada Independent decided against publishing my story. “We appreciated the diligent reporting by Jennifer and had no doubts about the credibility of the story,” Jon Ralston, the editor, later told CJR. “But as a nonprofit startup being threatened by costly and protracted litigation, we chose not to publish the piece even though we believed we would ultimately prevail in any legal action.”

Ahead of the publication of this story, Stonerock sent another letter, this time to CJR and me. “My clients believe that several of the primary sources for the Story are disgruntled former employees of the Review-Journal who harbor animosity toward the Review-Journal because their employment was terminated—tellingly, they made no allegations whatsoever until they learned that their employment would be terminated.” I was again informed that I would be the target of legal action.

Back at the Review-Journal, Moyer still serves as publisher. Blaser remains in his job. Matta-Caro says that she has seen Vega in the Review-Journal’s offices in recent weeks, and he is reportedly consulting for the Adelson family—advising them at Israel Hayom, a paper that the family owns in Tel-Aviv, and on potential daily newspaper purchases in the US.

In 2017, Frisbee and Rypka started a multimedia company called the CLASS Project (CLASS is an acronym for Compassion, Living Consciously, Authenticity, Service and Solutions). They also launched WE TOO, a support initiative for women. (Its name stands for Women Empowered Together Optimizing Opportunities.)

Matta-Caro told me that she’s pleased Moon is gone and that in October she received a raise. But her attorney, Patrick Kang of Ace Law Group in Las Vegas, said that her pay increase doesn’t bring her salary to parity with male employees in similar jobs. Her EEOC case remains open. The Review-Journal never formally responded to her filing, and she’s still requesting back pay and other damages from her months of alleged inappropriate treatment.

Moon has put out feelers for another publishing job. His LinkedIn page has a cheery message: “So what’s next for me? Actively seeking a contract position. I enjoy working with smart people, building teams and mentoring talented managers for their next career move.”

He would seem to have the financial flexibility to wait for just the right gig: He left the paper with a $500,000 severance package, according to a copy of his severance agreement. His wife, a contractor in the sales department, is also gone from the Review-Journal; she received a severance of $50,000.

Illustration: Darrel Frost.

Jennifer Robison is a writer living in San Francisco. She was a business reporter in Las Vegas for more than 15 years. Follow her on Twitter @_jrobison.

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From <https://www.cjr.org/special_report/sheldon-adelson-metoo-las-vegas-review-journal.php>

Press Release-Thursday, January 19, 2017-Dept of Justice-Las Vegas Sands Corporation Agrees to Pay Nearly $7 Million Penalty to Resolve FCPA Charges Related to China and Macao

For Immediate Release

Office of Public Affairs

Las Vegas Sands Corp. (Sands), a Nevada-based gaming and resort company, agreed to pay a $6.96 million criminal penalty to resolve the government’s investigation into violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in connection with business transactions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Macao.

Acting Assistant Attorney General David Bitkower of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and Special Agent in Charge Aaron C. Rouse of the FBI’s Las Vegas, Nevada, Field Office made the announcement.     

According to admissions by Sands made in connection with the resolution, certain Sands executives knowingly and willfully failed to implement a system of internal accounting controls to adequately ensure the legitimacy of payments to a business consultant who assisted Sands in promoting its brand in Macao and the PRC, and to prevent the false recording of those payments in its books and records.  Sands continued to make payments to the consultant despite warnings from its finance staff and an outside auditor that the business consultant had failed to account for portions of these funds.  In addition, Sands terminated the finance department employee who raised concerns about the payments.  

In total, from 2006 through 2009, Sands paid approximately $5.8 million to the business consultant without any discernable legitimate business purpose, it admitted.  

Sands entered into a non-prosecution agreement and has agreed to continue to cooperate with the department in any ongoing investigations and prosecutions relating to the conduct described in the agreement, including of individuals, to enhance its compliance program, and to report to the department on the implementation of its enhanced compliance program.

Pursuant to the non-prosecution agreement, Sands will pay a $6.96 million criminal penalty, which reflects a 25-percent reduction off the bottom of the applicable U.S. Sentencing Guidelines fine range.  The department reached this resolution based on a number of factors, including the nature and seriousness of the internal controls violations, and the fact that Sands fully cooperated in the investigation and fully remediated.  Sands’ cooperation included conducting a thorough internal investigation and voluntarily collecting, analyzing and organizing voluminous evidence and information for the government in response to requests, including translating key documents.  

Sands no longer employs or is affiliated with any of the individuals implicated in the conduct described in the agreement, and it engaged in extensive remedial measures, including revamping and expanding its compliance and audit functions and programs and making significant personnel changes, such as the retention of new leaders of its legal, compliance, internal audit and financial gatekeeper functions.    

In related proceedings, on April 7, 2016, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a cease and desist order against Sands, whereby Sands agreed to pay a civil penalty of approximately $9 million.  

The FBI’s Las Vegas field office investigated the case, and the case was prosecuted by Trial Attorney David M. Fuhr of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section.  The department appreciates the cooperation and assistance provided by the SEC, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada and the Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs in this matter.  

The Fraud Section is responsible for investigating and prosecuting all FCPA matters.  Additional information about the Justice Department’s FCPA enforcement efforts can be found at www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/fcpa.

Las Vegas Sands NPA

Updated October 3, 2017

Press Release Number:17-101

From <https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/las-vegas-sands-corporation-agrees-pay-nearly-7-million-penalty-resolve-fcpa-charges-related>

Did GOP Money Man Sheldon Adelson Violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act?

Adelson built a gambling empire in Macau that made him one of the world’s richest men. Now, his business methods are under investigation.

motherjones.com  July 17, 2012

Photo by Color China Photos/Zuma Press

This story, a coproduction of ProPublica and PBS’s Frontline, previously appeared on the ProPublica website.

A decade ago gambling magnate and leading Republican donor Sheldon Adelson looked at a desolate spit of land in Macau and imagined a glittering strip of casinos, hotels, and malls.

Where competitors saw obstacles, including Macau’s hostility to outsiders and historic links to Chinese organized crime, Adelson envisaged a chance to make billions.

Adelson pushed his chips to the center of the table, keeping his nerve even as his company teetered on the brink of bankruptcy in late 2008.

The Macau bet paid off, propelling Adelson into the ranks of the mega-rich and underwriting his role as the largest Republican donor in the 2012 campaign, providing tens of millions of dollars to Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and other GOP causes.

Now, some of the methods Adelson used in Macau to save his company and help build a personal fortune estimated at $25 billion have come under expanding scrutiny by federal and Nevada investigators, according to people familiar with both inquiries.

Internal email and company documents, disclosed here for the first time, show that Adelson instructed a top executive to pay about $700,000 in legal fees to Leonel Alves, a Macau legislator whose firm was serving as an outside counsel to Las Vegas Sands.

The company’s general counsel and an outside law firm warned that the arrangement could violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. It is unknown whether Adelson was aware of these warnings. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act bars American companies from paying foreign officials to “affect or influence any act or decision” for business gain.

Federal investigators are looking at whether the payments violate the statute because of Alves’ government and political roles in Macau, people familiar with the inquiry said. Investigators were also said to be separately examining whether the company made any other payments to officials. An email by Alves to a senior company official, disclosed by the Wall Street Journal, quotes him as saying “someone high ranking in Beijing” had offered to resolve two vexing issues—a lawsuit by a Taiwanese businessman and Las Vegas Sands’ request for permission to sell luxury apartments in Macau. Another email from Alves said the problems could be solved for a payment of $300 million. There is no evidence the offer was accepted. Both issues remain unresolved.

According to the documents, Alves met with local politicians and officials on behalf of Adelson’s company, Las Vegas Sands, to discuss several issues that complicated the company’s efforts to raise cash in 2008 and 2009.

Soon after Alves said he would apply what he termed “pressure” on local planning officials, the company prevailed on a key request, gaining permission to sell off billions of dollars of its real estate holdings in Macau.

Las Vegas Sands denies any wrongdoing. But it has told investors that it is under criminal investigation for possible violations of the US anti-bribery law. Adelson declined to respond to detailed questions, including whether he was aware of the concerns about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act when he directed payment of the bill from Alves’ law firm.

The documents depict Adelson as a hands-on manager, overseeing details of the company’s foray into Macau, which is now the world’s gambling capital.

They show that Alves helped the company address a crucial issue: Adelson’s frayed relations with officials in Macau and mainland China.

Alves met with prominent Macau officials on Las Vegas Sands’ behalf, emails show. When Adelson made a three-day trip to Beijing, Alves accompanied him, billing more than $18,000 for his services.

Alves promoted himself to Adelson as someone “uniquely situated both as counsel and legislator to ‘help’ us in Macau,” according to an email written by a Las Vegas Sands executive.

The then-general counsel of Las Vegas Sands warned that large portions of the invoices submitted by Alves in 2009 were triple what had been initially agreed and far more than could be justified by the legal work performed.

“I understand that what they are seeking is approx $700k,” the general counsel wrote to the company’s Macau executives in an email in late 2009. “If correct, that will require a lot of explaining given what our other firms are charging and given the FCPA,” the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Adelson, described by Forbes magazine as the largest foreign investor in China, ultimately ordered executives to pay Alves the full amount he had requested, according to an email that quotes his instructions.

Alves holds three public positions. He sits on the local legislature. He belongs to a 10-member council that advises Macau’s chief executive, the most powerful local administrator. And he’s a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a group that advises China’s central government.

Alves did not respond to detailed questions from reporters about his activities on behalf of Las Vegas Sands, saying in an email that the work he had done—”legal services”—was unrelated to his government positions. “I would never use my public offices to benefit the company, nor have I been asked to,” Alves wrote.

Several Las Vegas Sands executives resigned or were fired after expressing concerns about Alves’ billings. These include Las Vegas Sands’ general counsel and two top executives at Sands China, its Macau subsidiary.

Alves briefly severed his relationship with the company in early 2010, according to internal documents, but was rehired months later as outside counsel, a role he still plays.

The internal Las Vegas Sands documents were obtained by reporters working for the University of California’s Investigative Reporting Program as part of an ongoing collaboration with ProPublica and PBS’s Frontline.

The documents include dozens of emails, billing invoices, memos, and reports that circulated among top executives of Las Vegas Sands and its attorneys. The documents were provided by people who had authorized access to them. They offer important glimpses of the company’s dealings in Macau and China but are not a complete archive.

One invoice, for example, notes that Alves billed $25,000 for “expenses” in Beijing with no further explanation.

The documents shed new light on an issue separate from Alves’ work: the company’s difficulties in avoiding contact with Chinese organized crime figures as it built its casino business in Macau.

Nevada law bars licensed casino operators from associating with members of organized crime. State investigators are now assessing whether Las Vegas Sands complied with that rule in its Macau operations, people familiar with the inquiry said.

One invoice, for example, notes that Alves billed $25,000 for “expenses” in Beijing with no further explanation.

William Weidner, president of Las Vegas Sands from 1995 to 2009, said he understood from the beginning that opening casinos in Macau meant dealing with “junkets”—companies that arrange gambling trips for high rollers.

Gambling is illegal in mainland China, as is the transfer of large sums of money to Macau. The junkets solve those problems, providing billions of dollars in credit to gamblers. When necessary, they collect gambling debts, a critical function since China’s courts are not permitted to force losers to pay up.

Weidner said junkets are a natural result of China’s controls on the movement of money out of the country, channeling as much as $3 billion a month from the mainland to Macau.

“To Westerners, the junkets mean money laundering equated with organized crime or drugs,” he said. “In China where money is controlled, it’s part of doing business.”

Weidner resigned from the company after a bitter dispute with Adelson.

Nevada officials are now poring over records of transactions between junkets, Las Vegas Sands, and other casinos licensed by the state, people familiar with the inquiry say. Among the junket companies under scrutiny is a concern that records show was financed by Cheung Chi Tai, a Hong Kong businessman.

Cheung was named in a 1992 US Senate report as a leader of a Chinese organized crime gang, or triad. A casino in Macau owned by Las Vegas Sands granted tens of millions of dollars in credit to a junket backed by Cheung, documents show. Cheung did not respond to requests for comment.

Another document says that a Las Vegas Sands subsidiary did business with Charles Heung, a well-known Hong Kong film producer who was identified as an office holder in the Sun Yee On triad in the same 1992 Senate report. Heung, who has repeatedly denied any involvement in organized crime, did not return phone calls.

Allegations about the company’s dealings with Alves as well as its purported ties to organized crime are prominently mentioned in a 2010 lawsuit filed by Steven Jacobs, former CEO of Sands China.

In the suit, Jacobs contends he was fired after multiple disputes with Adelson, which included the continued employment of Alves and the company’s dealings with junkets.

Las Vegas Sands declined to respond to detailed questions about the emails, billing invoices or purported relationships with organized crime figures including Cheung and Heung. Nor would it comment on the federal or Nevada investigations.

Adelson told investors last year that the federal investigation was based on false allegations by disgruntled former employees attempting to blackmail his company.

“When the smoke clears, I am absolutely not 100 percent but 1,000 percent positive that there won’t be any fire below it,” he said, adding that what investigators will ultimately find “is a foundation of lies and fabrications.”

At least one prominent Republican has expressed concern about the source of Adelson’s campaign contributions. “Much of Mr. Adelson’s casino profits that go to him come from his casino in Macau,” Sen. John McCain noted in an interview last month with PBS’s NewsHour.

“Maybe in a roundabout way, foreign money is coming into an American political campaign,” said McCain, an Arizona Republican.

The questions raised by McCain and others have not prevented Adelson, the self-made son of a Boston cabdriver, from emerging as a powerful political figure in both Israel and the United States. A longtime backer of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel, Adelson created a free daily newspaper, now Israel’s largest, that supports the policies of Netanyahu’s Likud Party.

His family’s $25 million in contributions kept Newt Gingrich in the presidential race. He has been widely reported as donating $10 million to a super-PAC supporting Mitt Romney. A “well-placed source” recently told Forbes that Adelson’s willingness to financially support Romney was “limitless.” A filing with the Federal Election Commission last night shows that Adelson and his wife, Miriam, gave $5 million to the “YG Action Fund,” a super-PAC linked to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican.

* * *

Macau’s emergence in the 21st century as the biggest gambling center in the world, with $33.5 billion in annual revenue—four times that of Las Vegas—is a matter of history and geography.

A former Portuguese colony, the tiny peninsula was handed over to China in 1999. It has its own legislature, laws, court system, and chief executive, all of which exist under the umbrella of Chinese control.

For generations, profits from Chinese gambling flowed primarily to a single local company. But after China took control, authorities agreed to let foreign companies get a piece of the action.

Las Vegas Sands was among more than a dozen companies to apply for a license. Its plans were among the most expansive, calling for an American-style complex of hotels, casinos, shopping malls, and luxury apartments.

The first of four Las Vegas Sands casinos, the Sands Macau, opened its doors in 2004. It was immediately successful as well-heeled gamblers from the mainland flocked to the tables.

Over the next several years, the company pushed ahead with its multibillion-dollar construction projects on a strip of reclaimed land known as Cotai.

But in the summer of 2008, Las Vegas Sands faced a cash crunch. The global economic slowdown hit revenues at its casinos in Nevada. And gambling slowed in Macau after China’s central government abruptly cut down on the number of visas it granted for travel to the region. Suddenly, the company was struggling to make payments on billions of dollars in long-term debt.

Executives at Las Vegas Sands began looking at ways to raise cash in Macau. To do this, the company would need some help from local officials.

It wasn’t clear they would get it.

In China, relationships, or guanxi, can make or break an empire. Adelson’s relationships in Macau and China were frayed. George Koo, a member of the Las Vegas Sands board of directors, wrote in a confidential memo that Adelson’s behavior had offended political figures in both Macau and China.

Koo quoted a prominent Macau official as saying Adelson had “slapped the table in front of Edmund Ho,” Macau’s chief executive. “Supposedly, Ho has said that he will not see SGA anymore,” the memo said, using Adelson’s initials.

Accompanied by Alves, Koo met with the Macau chief executive over lunch. According to Koo’s memo, Ho expressed his regret that Adelson “has burned so many bridges with Beijing,” the memo said.

According to Koo’s account, a top Chinese official overseeing Macau named Liao Hui was so angry at Adelson that he refused to meet with him. It is not clear from the memo what caused the rupture, but Koo said Adelson turned to “the Israeli military to arrange a meeting with Liao,” who initially agreed but then said he would only send his deputy. No meeting ever took place, the document says.

Weidner, who resigned as president of Las Vegas Sands in March 2009, said in an interview that Adelson was “out of his element” dealing with Chinese officials.

Weidner recalled struggling to explain Adelson’s style to the Chinese, once comparing his boss to a famous emperor who became angry with China’s scholars and buried them alive with their books. “I would tell them: ‘He is brilliant. Sometimes, like the emperor, he is brutal.'”

Leonel Alves seemed to be an ideal person to smooth relations.

A Macau native, born of a Portuguese father and a Chinese mother, the attorney had been a fixture in the local scene for decades and was nimble in the face of shifting political tides.

In the years leading up to Portugal’s handover of its onetime colony to China in 1999, he was among a select group of local residents chosen to serve on the transition team.

Alves became a Chinese citizen and dedicated himself to learning China’s official dialect, Mandarin, to complement his fluency in Portuguese, English, and Cantonese. His legal practice was already successful. He boasted to local reporters of his car collection, which included a Ferrari and a BMW M3.

Las Vegas Sands put Alves’ law firm on retainer in midsummer 2008, naming him as an outside counsel. Documents show his firm was to be paid $37,500 a month for 80 hours of work, with additional hours to be billed at a rate of more than $550 an hour.

Over the years, the Justice Department has made it clear that American companies can employ foreign officials. But companies have been told they must take great care and create safeguards to prevent such officials from using their position or political standing to gain commercial advantage.

T. Markus Funk, a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm and co-chair of the American Bar Association Global Anti-Corruption Initiatives Task Force, declined to discuss the specifics of the Las Vegas Sands inquiry. But he said companies generally avoid hiring sitting local officials as lobbyists or representatives because of the risk that they will improperly end up wielding their influence.

“It would be a huge red flag,” Funk said. “If you are paying someone because you think they are going to have a questionable backroom discussion, essentially a quid pro quo relationship, that’s a no-no. You can get yourself in big trouble pretty quickly.”

In response to written questions, Alves said in an email that his political career has never conflicted with “my profession as a lawyer.” He said his office had “been scrutinized by the Chinese and American authorities like few have in Macau, and no authority has ever had any suspicion.”

Alves noted that his multiple government posts did not “confer to me any executive and administrative power” or the ability to “influence” what he described as “the relevant authorities.”

US companies sometimes ask the Justice Department in advance for an opinion on whether a particular hire constitutes a violation of the law. It is not known if Las Vegas Sands posed such a question about Alves. Funk, a former federal prosecutor, said that a company following “best practices” would look closely at both the size of the proposed payments and the procedures put in place to assure compliance.

“I’d want to make sure the individual is getting paid an appropriate scale,” Funk said. “I’d want to get some assurance he was familiar with the FCPA and had agreed to abide by its terms. I’d want a code of conduct in place and I’d want to see detailed billing statements.”

One of the first issues Alves addressed was Las Vegas Sands’ request for permission from local authorities to sell a mall and 300 luxury apartments it had built next to one of its casinos, the Four Seasons Macau.

The company’s original agreement with the government did not allow it to break up the property into separate pieces for sale. If Sands could amend the agreement, it would open the way to raise billions.

On August 12, 2008, Alves wrote an email to Luis Melo, who was then Las Vegas Sands’ in-house counsel in Macau. He wrote that he was planning to meet with local officials to “monitor and apply pressure” to what he called the “revision process” of the “land concession contract.” It is not known whether the meeting took place or what, if anything, Alves said to other officials in the government.

In late September, the secretary of Macau’s Land, Public Works, and Transport Bureau declared that Las Vegas Sands had to abide by its original contract with Macau, which did not permit the property to be sold separately.

“The terms in the concession contract are very clear and any move must be according to what is written in the contract,” he said, according to a report in the Macau Daily Times.

Once again, local law posed challenges to the company’s plans. And once again, Alves stepped forward to help.

That statement came at a critical moment for Las Vegas Sands. With the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the United States, even the most solvent companies were finding it impossible to borrow. At the end of September, Adelson staked his company $475 million of his own money.

In October, planning officials handed Las Vegas Sands much of what it was seeking. They said they would allow the property to be divided into four parts: the casino, the apartment complex, the mall, and a parking garage. Each could be sold separately. In their decision, Macau officials said they were trying to help Las Vegas Sands address its need for more capital.

The company portrayed the decision as a victory and said it “paves the way” for the sale of the 300 luxury apartments.

The company’s financial condition continued to worsen. It halted construction on its massive projects in Cotai. In November 2008, Adelson kicked in another $525 million of his own money. That month, the company told investors it was in danger of defaulting on $5.2 billion in loans. Such a default, auditors warned, could threaten the company’s survival.

Ultimately, Las Vegas Sands did not sell the apartment building or mall. (It continues to seek final permission to sell individual apartments.) The company moved to raise capital through another route: an initial public offering of stock on the Hong Kong exchange that, it was hoped, would bring in billions of dollars.

Once again, local law posed challenges to the company’s plans. And once again, Alves stepped forward to help.

* * *

One key to Las Vegas Sands’ survival in Macau was its ability to whisk customers from Hong Kong to the doors of its casinos. The long-established ferry route unloads its passengers in downtown Macau, about a three-mile drive from Adelson’s casinos in Cotai.

Las Vegas Sands had created its own ferry service, Cotai Waterjets, which dropped gamblers at a dock just a short shuttle ride from its casinos.

But the future of Cotai Waterjets was unclear. A competing ferry service had filed a complaint alleging the government had improperly awarded the concession to Las Vegas Sands without competitive bidding.

In February 2009, a Macau court agreed, voiding the contract.

Alves set to work. In the spring of 2009, he arranged what a billing invoice from his firm describes as “meetings and contacts with the Macau Government.”

On October 19, 2009, Alves met with Edmund Ho, Macau’s chief executive, and Fernando Chui Sai On, Ho’s soon-to-be successor. (Ho was the Macau official who had purportedly refused to meet with Adelson.)

It is not known what was discussed. Alves billed Las Vegas Sands for two hours of his time, according to his invoice.

Also that day, Alves billed for more than an hour of phone calls with company executives, his invoices show.

Las Vegas Sands was explicit about what was at stake, telling Hong Kong investors in a public filing that loss of the ferry concession “could result in a significant loss of visitors to our Cotai Strip properties.” This would have a “material adverse effect on our business,” the company said.

Within days of Alves’ meeting with Ho, Las Vegas Sands won a stunning victory. Ho issued an administrative regulation that allowed ferry contracts to be awarded without competitive bidding. The court rulings against the company were moot. Las Vegas Sands retained control of its route and ultimately obtained several new ones.

Attempts to reach Ho were unsuccessful.

The initial public offering launched in late November 2009, raising $2.5 billion for Las Vegas Sands.

Alves remains a member of the Executive Council. He declined to discuss his interactions with Ho or the council.

* * *

Just as Sands was resolving several of its thornier legal issues, a dispute erupted among its executives over Alves that had far-reaching consequences.

It began on Oct. 20, 2009, shortly before the ferry decision was announced, with a seemingly routine event: Alves’ firm submitted bills for its recent work.

The firm said it was charging at triple the previously agreed rate to account for the work it had done on the public offering, scheduled for the following month. In an email, Las Vegas Sands’ in-house lawyer in Macau, Luis Melo, objected, noting the invoices were “not in accordance” with the letter which spelled out the financial terms of Alves’ retainer.

The issue reached the desk of J. Alberto Gonzalez-Pita, general counsel at Las Vegas Sands headquarters in Nevada. In an email, Gonzalez-Pita expressed concern about a sudden request for more money from an outside lawyer who was also a foreign official, saying such a payment would require “a lot of explaining.”

With the bill still unpaid, Alves submitted his resignation effective in February 2010.

An internal email shows he continued to report privately to Adelson, delivering at least one message from the company’s chairman and CEO to Macau’s government.

Separately, he also pushed to return to Sands China.

In March, Alves submitted a new proposal, asking to be paid $125,000 a month with no obligation to provide billing details, internal records show.

Gonzalez-Pita, the Las Vegas general counsel, rejected the idea. “It’s outrageous,” he wrote. “Our corporate retainer with Paul Weiss is almost three times less per month,” he said, referring to the company’s outside counsel, New York-based Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

Gonzalez-Pita elaborated a week later.

“I continue to believe this proposal to be inappropriate, unrealistic, extraordinarily expensive and way above market,” he wrote to Jacobs, the CEO of Sands China who had originally been recruited to handle the IPO. “Been a long time since I’ve seen a lawyer or a firm make as naked a power play as has LA,” Leonel Alves. “He sure has chutzpah.”

Jacobs decided against rehiring Alves. “Let’s talk about a replacement for outside counsel,” he wrote in a March 10, 2010, email to Melo, Sands China’s general counsel in Macau.

“The transition will not be easy…and has a high probability of becoming messy…but it is the right thing to do for the business,” he wrote.

Jacobs told Alves that he would not be retained, emails show.

The same day, Jacobs informed colleagues that he had paid the disputed invoices after Alves submitted a more detailed account of the work he had done on the public offering. Jacobs wrote to Gonzalez-Pita that he had been “instructed by SGA and MAL to pay and close out the matter.”

The initials SGA and MAL are used within the company to refer to Sheldon G. Adelson and Michael A. Leven, the president of Las Vegas Sands.

“I am sorry that this was not communicated to you but I am glad that FCPA outside counsel did not highlight any substantial issue with the payment,” Jacobs wrote.

Gonzalez-Pita replied that Jacobs was mistaken and that the company’s outside lawyer had identified the payments as a possible violation of the US anti-bribery law.

“Unfortunately,” Gonzalez-Pita wrote to Jacobs: “FCPA counsel did highlight a problem” with paying Alves anything more than his normal fees “plus a commercially reasonable premium.”

“While I can appreciate that you received instructions to make the payment,” Gonzalez-Pita wrote on March 12. “I wish you would have advised me so I could have intervened.”

Gonzalez-Pita resigned from the company in April 2010.

On July 23, Las Vegas Sands fired Jacobs. A month later, the company dismissed Melo and the rest of the legal team in Macau, according to the lawsuit Jacobs subsequently filed in Nevada.

In that action, Jacobs said he was dismissed for refusing Adelson’s “illegal demands,” including an order that he fire Melo and replace him with Alves. Las Vegas Sands said in court briefs that it fired Jacobs for disobeying orders and working on unauthorized deals.

The company rehired Alves as outside counsel in the fall of 2010, a position he still holds. It is not known how much he is being paid.

In April of this year, Sands China opened Cotai Central, the $4 billion project it had temporarily abandoned in 2008, when the company stood at the brink. Within six hours of the opening, Sands China reported, more than 84,000 people pushed through the new casino’s doors.

Matt Isaacs and Lowell Bergman reported on this story for the Investigative Reporting Program of the University of California and PBS Frontline. Some of their work was underwritten by a grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Engelberg is managing editor of ProPublica.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/inside-investigation-leading-republican-money-man-sheldon-adelson/

Sheldon Adelson Goes to Court

SPOTTED

Updated Apr. 21, 2017 / Published Apr. 05, 2013 7:07AM EDT 

Sheldon Adelson in Las Vegas court on Thursday. (Julie Jacobson/AP)

It's not just Newt Gingrich who get to spend time with Sheldon Adelson anymore. In a rare public appearance, the casino magnate and Republican sugar daddy testified in a Las Vegas court. Adelson had to defend himself against claims that a Hong Kong businessman worked behind the scenes to help Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands casinos start business in Macau. So what did we learn about Adelson? Apparently he is a “hot-dog freak” and has a sense of humor about his height, but also can be pushy, trying to cite pamphlets he’d brought in a briefcase and hadn’t introduced as evidence. His lawyers tried to bar cameras in the courtroom, saying they posed a security risk.

Read it at Los Angeles Times

From <https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2013/04/05/sheldon-adelson-goes-to-court?jwsource=cl>

Sheldon Adelson's Casino Company Stirs Fresh Questions With Admission It 'Likely' Broke Federal Law

Las Vegas Sands' filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on a possible violation of anti-bribery law leaves unanswered the most fundamental questions about its conduct in Asia.

by Stephen Engelberg

March 4, 2013, 4:57 p.m. EST

From <https://www.propublica.org/article/sheldon-adelsons-casino-company-stirs-fresh-questions-with-admission-it-lik>

Last week's admission by Sheldon Adelson's casino company that it had "likely" violated provisions of the federal law barring U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials raises some intriguing questions. Chief among them: Which transactions by Las Vegas Sands and its far-flung subsidiaries are at issue?

Adelson, one of the world's richest men, came to public prominence during the 2012 campaign, when he and his wife Miriam donated at least $98 million to various candidates and groups. Included was $30 million for the Restore Our Future super PAC that supported Mitt Romney and $20 million to Winning Our Future, a super PAC that backed Newt Gingrich. Late in the campaign, Adelson asserted that federal investigators had targeted his company because of his political activity.

The terse statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by Las Vegas Sands noted "likely violations of the books and records and internal controls provisions of the FCPA" (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) had come to light after three independent members of the board investigated "matters" raised by a February 2011 subpoena from SEC investigators and by an ongoing Justice Department inquiry.

In a news release issued Sunday, the company said the violations it had detected related to the "accounting provisions" of the law, not its "anti-bribery provisions."

Several news organizations have examined Las Vegas Sands' efforts to build its gambling business in Asia. The Investigative Reporting Program of the University of California, PBS Frontline and ProPublica published a story last year that disclosed the role of a local lawyer/legislator in overcoming regulatory hurdles in Macau, an autonomous region of China that is home to some of the company's most lucrative casinos.

Subsequently, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal wrote detailed stories that centered on Yang Saixin, a shadowy Beijing businessman who told the Times that Las Vegas Sands had paid him $30,000 a month until his firing in 2009.

According to the Times' account, the company provided more than $70 million to companies tied to Yang to construct a trade center in Beijing and sponsor a basketball team. Several million dollars were "unaccounted for" after those projects were shut down, the Times reported.

Las Vegas Sands has declined to elaborate on its filing but did tell the SEC that "in recent years, the Company has improved its practices with respect to books and records and internal controls."

https://www.propublica.org/article/sheldon-adelsons-casino-company-stirs-fresh-questions-with-admission-it-lik

Digital Currency Macau

2023 | Macau establishes digital currency as legal tender

By Jimmy Choi 05 Sep 2023

A new law regulating Macau’s currency issuance has come into effect, giving digital currency the same legal status as traditional money in the Chinese special administrative region. The new legal framework, proposed by the Macau government, became effective on September 1, after being approved by the SAR’s legislative assembly in June. It replaces the old regime set up in 1995, when the territory was still a colony of Portugal. Authorities have said it was necessary to update the law to...continue reading

From <https://www.centralbanking.com/fintech/cbdc/7959634/macau-establishes-digital-currency-as-legal-tender>

Digital RMB for Macau bets could be years away: scholar

 Jul 24, 2023 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck 

It could be “five years” or more before a “trend is more clear” regarding general use of a digital version of China’s currency, renminbi (RMB), suggests a Macau academic.

Ricardo Siu Chi Sen, associate professor in business economics at the University of Macau, was responding to questions from GGRAsia on the sidelines of the recent Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia conference in Macau.

Asked whether the Macau casino industry might move to acceptance of digital renminbi for gambling wagers, Mr Siu stated: “I don’t think this would be in a short-term period. There must be a transition.”

He added that presently, a digital version of China’s currency “only accounts for 0.13 percent” of general transactions.

“Maybe after five years, 10 years, some trend could become more clear” regarding the general use of digital renminbi, he stated.

Casino bets in Macau are usually denominated in Hong Kong dollars, which is an internationally-convertible currency, unlike the Macau pataca.

Though Mr Siu said it might be possible in future to see “multicurrency” operations for gaming. That “could be resolved easily with technology,” he suggested.

He also observed that Hong Kong was now part of China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, known as CIPS.

“That international payment system is now parallel to SWIFT,” he added, referring to a global bank-transaction clearance system.

Macau’s Legislative Assembly passed in June Law 10/23, designating digital currency as a recognised form of Macau-issued currency in the city.

That was “the first stage for future settlement and arrangement” in the city for Macau-issued digital currency, said Mr Siu, though regulation specifically on a form of Macau digital currency is not yet in place.

From <https://www.ggrasia.com/digital-rmb-for-macau-bets-could-be-years-away-scholar/> 

This article is more than 1 year old

DON'T PANIC! No credit card details lost after hackers crack world's largest casino group

Las Vegas Sands email and website still down after hackers trash CEO Sheldon Adelson

Iain Thomson in San Francisco

13 Feb 2014

IT administrators at the Las Vegas Sands casino are having a tough time restoring their systems after hackers successfully got inside the corporation's firewall, but it appears that the most valuable sections of the network are safe, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

Board chairman A.G. Burnett told Associated Press that the credit card database of customers at the world's largest gambling chain is secure, and that the integrity of the gambling systems run by the chain hasn't been breached, so no Ocean's 11–style antics are expected.

The problems for the casino started on Monday when the attackers took control of the company's website and posted an image of the consortium's US casinos in flames, along with a picture of CEO Sheldon Adelson with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the message "Damn A, don't let your tongue cut your throat. Encouraging the use of weapons of mass destruction, under any conditions, is a crime."

Image: Hardly a well-designed website

More worryingly, the hackers also added a scrolling list of employees, their email addresses, some social security numbers, and other identifying information. The Sands website is still down and a spokesperson confirmed to El Reg that the email systems still haven't been switched back on.

"While we have been able to confirm that certain core operating systems were not impacted by the hacking, the company remains focused on working through a step-by-step process to ascertain what, if any, additional systems may have been impacted," Sands spokesman Ron Reese said in a reported statement.

At first sight this looks like a politically motivated attack against Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire CEO of the Sands group. Adelson's biography reads like a Horatio Alger myth: the son of poor Ukrainian immigrants who became the ninth richest man in the world, and he's known in the technology industry as the founder of the COMDEX trade show, which he sold in 1995 for $862m.

Adelson also donates millions to American political campaigns – almost exclusively to the Republican Party and its candidates – and is somewhat outspoken on foreign policy issues in the Middle East. The hacker's message presumably refers to a comment he made suggesting the US should explode a nuclear weapon over uninhabited Iran's land as a precursor to negotiations over its nuclear program – a comment he later dismissed as hyperbole.

Defacing a website isn't too hard, and usually has minimal effect on the owners, but the fact that internal systems were broken into to is cause for concern. Seemingly innocuous hacking or DDoS attacks have been used in the past to mask deeper penetrations in the past, and computer forensics teams will be scouring through server logs to find out exactly what happened.

Nevada gaming officials are investigating the attack at the moment, and the FBI is also reported to be looking into the case. Neither was available for comment at time of going to press. ®

Whitepaper: Top 5 Tips For Navigating Your SASE Journey

From <https://www.theregister.com/2014/02/13/dont_panic_no_credit_card_details_lost_after_hackers_crack_worlds_largest_casino_group/>

Adelson Press

dbharath@ap.org

matt@wdx.che

Lowell Bergman

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