Sands' luck tested as huge suit goes before US court
Hong Kong businessman claims casino operator cheated him out of dues for helping it win Macau licence
Las Vegas Sands, the casino operator controlled by US billionaire Sheldon Adelson, faces as much as US$328 million in damage claims at a trial over who helped it win its Macau gaming licence.
Opening statements were scheduled yesterday in Las Vegas in a second trial over Hong Kong businessman Richard Suen's allegations that Sands breached a 2001 agreement to pay him and his associates US$5 million and 2 per cent of the net income from the firm's Macau casinos if it was awarded a permit.
Suen says meetings he arranged between Adelson and Chinese officials in Beijing were instrumental in leading Edmund Ho, the former chief executive of Macau, to award the firm a gaming licence in 2002.
According to Suen, Ho initially expressed misgivings about Sands' large-scale plans.
"The jury can and should conclude that Macau's chief executive was influenced to change his approach in deference to the Beijing central government," Suen's lawyers said in a March 22 pretrial filing.
In 2010, a US court of appeals reversed a US$43.8 million award by a jury two years earlier in favour of Suen and sent the case back for a new trial. The appellate court found the judge presiding over the previous trial had incorrectly allowed hearsay evidence linking the meetings in Beijing with the award of the gaming licence.