When Trump couldn’t swing a Macau deal with Joseph Lau and a partner who hobnobbed with Clintons

With the United States on knife-edge as the first results roll in arguably the most controversial race for the White House in the country’s history, new details have emerged of attempts Republican candidate Donald Trump made to get on at the ground floor of Macau’s gaming revolution in 2001.

Reports in Macau and US media outlets have stated that Trump “crossed paths” with a billionaire Macau businessman currently under house arrest in New York as part of an FBI investigation into corruption at the highest levels of the United Nations, while making a bid with other investors for one of the three gaming licences that were up for grabs in 2001.

Last week The Wall Street Journal reported that the Macau billionaire in question, Ng Lap Seng, who has high-level connections to both Washington and Beijng, joined Trump and other investors in a 2001 bid for one of three Macau casino licences then being made available.

The projected deal would have seen the Republican candidate’s Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts Holdings operate a casino out of Ng’s existing Fortuna Casino and Hotel property on behalf of a Macau firm named Baia Da Nossa Senhora Entertainment Company, whose shareholders included several other local billionaires and their associates.

The consortium had committed to investing about US$1.4 billion as part of the project although Ng eventually failed to gain one of the new licenses with the Fortuna Casino and Hotel, which was at the time popular with Chinese military personnel.

Other partners in the proposed deal included Joseph Lau, the Hong Kong property developer who has been on the run since 2014 after being convicted in absentia of corruption in Macau and sentenced to more than five years in prison. Lau also made news last year after paying a world-record US$48 million in Geneva for a 12.03-carat blue diamond that he subsequently renamed after his young daughter, Josephine.