Adelson continues to testify today

Las Vegas Sands Corp chairman and chief executive Sheldon Adelson is set to return today to the witness stand, in a court case in which a Hong Kong businessman is seeking US$328 million (MOP2.6 billion) over claims he helped the company to get its Macau gaming licence. Las Vegas Sands is the parent company of Sands China Ltd, one of Macau’s six casino operators. This will be the third day Mr Adelson will be on the stand in this case, which is being handled by a Nevada state court, in the United States. Last Friday, Mr Adelson said he was not involved and didn’t authorise former Las Vegas Sands president William Weidner’s offer of a share of the company’s Macau profits to Hong Kong businessman Richard Suen, Bloomberg reports. Mr Weidner is set to testify later this week. Mr Adelson claims Mr Suen had no influence whatsoever in Las Vegas Sands getting a Macau gaming licence, after the Macau government solicited public offers for gaming concessions in October 2001. Mr Suen is alleging that Mr Adelson breached a 2001 agreement to pay him and his associates US$5 million and 2 percent of the net income from the company’s Macau casinos, if Las Vegas Sands was awarded a gaming licence here, as eventually happened in 2002. Mr Suen claims that meetings he arranged between Mr Adelson and Chinese officials were instrumental in this. This is the second time the claims have gone to trial. On Friday, Mr Adelson also said that eventually Las Vegas Sands was paired with Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd to get one of the gaming licences in Macau, after being approached by a “messenger” he assumed was from Edmund Ho Hau Wah, the then chief executive of Macau. But Mr Adelson said the venture with Galaxy Entertainment didn’t work out because the Hong Kong group didn’t want to disclose its partners, which turned out to include the son of a reputed “triad member”, according to him. The fallout led the Macau government to grant Las Vegas Sands a sub-gaming concession under Galaxy Entertainment’s licence, allowing it to build its own casinos. In an announcement issued today, Galaxy Entertainment refers to media reports of “certain inaccurate and/or untrue statements” about the company made by Mr Adelson during his testimony, and says it is taking actions to investigate them. Galaxy Entertainment says it “reserves all its rights and remedies, including its rights to make any claim against any person who makes any inaccurate or untrue statement” about the company.