Hannah Dreier, Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) – Attorneys in a dispute between the Las Vegas Sands casino and a Hong Kong businessman told conflicting stories about the role that personal relationships and favors play in the Chinese gambling enclave of Macau during their opening arguments.
Richard Suen says he was hired by Sands to help build relationships with the Chinese government. The case turns on whether meetings Suen set up between Sands executives and Beijing officials in 2001 helped the company get a foothold in Macau, a special administrative region of China and now the world’s biggest gambling market.
Attorneys for Suen argued in a Las Vegas court that he should be compensated $328 million.
But the Sands team told jurors that Suen is owed nothing because officials in Macau, not Beijing, decide which companies to license. The former Portuguese colony, about an hour’s boat ride from Hong Kong, is connected to mainland China by a narrow strip of land.
Sands CEO and billionaire Sheldon Adelson was expected to testify Thursday.
It’s the second time the fight has played out in court. A jury in 2008 awarded $58.6 million to Suen, but the Nevada Supreme Court overturned the verdict in 2010. Among other things, the Supreme Court said the district judge shouldn’t have allowed hearsay statements during the trial.
Suen filed the lawsuit in 2004 after failing to reach a compensation agreement with Sands. He said he and his company were promised a $5 million success fee and 2 percent of net casino profits in exchange for helping Sands open its first casino in Macau.
Suen is now asking for more than three times the amount of compensation he requested during the 2008 trial because of Sands’ explosive success in Macau.
Suen, a former business partner of Adelson’s brother, Leonard Adelson, says he arranged for the mogul to meet high-ranking Chinese officials, including Vice Premier Qian Qichen and Beijing Mayor Liu Qi. He also says he helped Sands curry favor by stopping Congress from voting on a nonbinding resolution in 2001 that would have asked the U.S. Olympic Committee to vote against China’s bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympic Gaming in Beijing.
Suen attorney John O’Malley told jurors that Macau could be susceptible to influence from the mainland.
Both sides sought to educate the jury on the Chinese concept of “guanxi,” or personal relationships.
Sands attorney Richard Sauber suggested that Adelson may have had his own “guanxi,” noting that Adelson used his connection to the Republican Party to arrange a 2001 meeting with former president George W. Bush’s ambassador to China.
The company partnered with Hong Kong-based Galaxy Entertainment in February 2002 and was awarded one of three gambling licenses by the Macau government. The companies could not reach an agreement, however, and the partnership was dissolved.
Macau then awarded Las Vegas Sands a subconcession, a decision that Suen’s lawyers said was a result of their client’s earlier lobbying.
Sands now operates four resorts in Macau, as well as the Venetian and the Palazzo casinos on the Las Vegas Strip.
The company is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department in connection with a lawsuit filed by the former chief executive officer of Sands China. Steven Jacobs was fired in 2010 and filed a wrongful termination lawsuit, saying he was let go for opposing company demands that he engage in improper conduct.
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Associated Press writer Hannah Dreier contributed.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.
