Forum Post: Macau Police Arrest 100 Prostitutes In Romney Donor Sheldon Adelson's China Casino
Posted 12 years ago on July 18, 2012, 5:57 a.m. EST by fiftyfourforty
(1077)
from New York, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
NO WAR
If Romney wins,
war depends,
on Sheldon's whims.
Isn't Holder investigating Adelson for violations of the
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
If he is GUILTY, how much would he contribute to willard
out of his $25,000,000,000 to stay out of jail
thankyou citizens united! we need more thomases and scalias
There is an investigation ongoing. I personally doubt that Obama/Holder will go full blast on this though. I'd be pleasantly surprised. Also there is a law suit ongoing by a former Sands executive for wrongful termination. The exec says that he opposed Sheldon's prostitution strategy and was fired for that reason. Sheldon's lawyers forgot to bring a bunch of emails the court wanted to see at a recent hearing on that case. It was reported that coinciding with an Adelson visit to Macau the local cops arrested over 100 prostitutes who were working there as well as 28 organized crime figures.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/06/lawsuit-accuses-romney-donor-adelson-pursuing-prostitution-strategy-his-hotels
Lawsuit Accuses GOP Donor Adelson of Pursuing "Prostitution Strategy" In His Hotels —By Adam Serwer| Fri Jun. 29, 2012 1:56 PM PDT 60
GOP mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. the7eye.org.il/Flickr A former executive at the Las Vegas Sands Corp., whose chairman is Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, has accused the company of "controlling and directing" prostitution at its casinos in Macau, the Wall Street Journal reports. The accusations are part of a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by the former executive, Steve Jacobs.
In a statement Thursday, Las Vegas Sands spokesman Ron Reese said the company has "consistently maintained that the allegations of misconduct and wrongdoing by Jacobs against the company and its senior management are baseless." Mr. Reese's statement added, "Mr. Adelson has always objected to and maintained a strong policy against prostitution on our properties, a fact that Mr. Jacobs knows to be true, and any accusation to the contrary represents a blatant and reprehensible personal attack on Mr. Adelson's character."
Mr. Jacobs has already accused the company of firing him for objecting to Mr. Adelson's illegal demands, which allegedly included extorting senior government officials in Macau, threatening Chinese banks and using the services of a Macau lawyer despite concerns his retention posed risks to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bans bribery by U.S. companies abroad. The company denies the allegations.
In addition to the wrongful termination lawsuit, the report notes that the Sands Corp. is already under investigation "by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and by the U.S. Department of Justice into possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act."
According to the New York Times, Adelson, who has pledged "limitless" funds to defeat President Barack Obama in November, has already given at least $40 million to Republican super-PACs, which includes $10 million to Restore Our Future, the super-PAC backing GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Adelson's donations are motivated in part his disapproval of Obama on Israel policy and by his belief that "the two-state solution is a stepping stone for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people." (It's unclear what fate Adelson intends for the millions of Palestinians who remain under Israeli occupation, whom he considers "an invented people.")
One question is whether the allegations will taint Adelson's campaign cash. Unlikely, given his role as the GOP's ATM, although at this point they're still just allegations.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++ What is not a mere allegation is that Macau police raided one of Adelson's hotels when he was on the grounds and rounded up 100 suspected prostitutes and 22 suspected pimps.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/7578834-macau-police-arrests-more-than-100-prostitutes-at-venetian-casino
More than 100 women have been arrested by Macau police on charges of prostitution at the plush Venetian Macao Resort Hotel and Casino, one of the largest and luxurious resorts built for gaming in the former Portuguese colony.
The arrests were made right at the Hotels enormous gaming floors taking into custody 110 Chinese sex workers coming from the mainland and 22 men thought to be working as their pimps, according to South China Morning Posts.
The women told police they were forced to pay their pimps a daily protection fee of as much as $HK1000 ($US132) an amount they would need to raise in looking for customers playing at the casino gaming area.
The Venetian was owned by Las Vegas Sands gambling tycoon Sheldon Adelson, who also controlled two other casinos in Macao, the Four Season and Sands Macao, and he was on a routine visit at the hotel grounds on the day of the raid.
A Sands China spokeswoman said it was hotel’s policy not to allow sex workers to ply their trade within the premises and that the raid was not connected with the owner’s visit.
Despite the hotel policy Macau legislator Au-Kam San said prostitution has been an ongoing issue and lately has become a serious one that raids were common to prevent proliferation.
++++++++++++++++++++ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/criminal-justice/his-man-in-macau-inside-the-investigation-into-sheldon-adelsons-empire/
............er 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 U.S. 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...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yEVDNtqs7M&feature=player_detailpage
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Are we going to hold all candidates responsible for the actions of their supporters? If that's the case, great. Complaining about one candidate and ignoring another that has similar problems only helps continue corruption. Obama may be the better choice for Progressives, but he's got his own problems with corrupt associates and friends.
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the Demopublicans? the Republicrats?
A complete change in topic from fundraisers that have also committed crimes. Personally I don't see voter fraud as a serious problem. If some governor or sec. of state wishes to stir up the fears of ignorant voters scurrying around looking for something that isn't there fine with me. It might keep them occupied and causing less trouble for the rest of us.
I also don't see where it is likely to intimidate many potential voters. We should all be required to demonstrate who we are and establish, when we register, that we are eligible to vote. Both sides seem to be attempting to maximize fears within their base on this non-issue.
I've registered to vote in three different states. When I registered, they all required picture identification, etc.
At the polling locations I have never had to present ID, but always had to sign on a given line. I seriously doubt that "voter fraud" by people presenting themselves as other people accounts for even 0.01% of ballots cast. As Stalin supposedly noted, "It's not the people who vote that count; it's the people who count the votes."
I agree, talk of fraud is simply another distraction. The state I currently reside in has required photo ID for the ten years I've been here. The previous only one compared signatures. Neither method is much of an issue. The talk about showing ID being intimidation is as foolish to me as the hunt for these imagined hordes of fraudulent voters.
Of course a certain problem exists at least for one side. Most states require residents to carry proper ID when in public. At least police have stopped me on some occasions and asked merely to see my ID. Maybe because I look like an anarchist? :{)
Who has committed $100,000,000.00 to Obama? And what are their ethics problems? Are you saying $100,000,000.00 don't get you access, or are you saying access doesn't matter?
I'll accept the information about Adelson as fact. We have corruption because each side complains only about the corruption of the other. Obama has convicted felons as donors and bundlers too, yet often gets a pass from Democrats.
The amount isn't important, a few hundred thousand or a few million, if you're accepting it from a felon and later giving them access you're corrupt. Nothing will ever change if we continue to rationalize similar behavior from one candidate and demonize it in the other.
Read your answer and I'm ready to start looking at Obama's contributors give me some names, I hear FOX is number one and you can hardly call them Obama supporters so who are these 100,000,000 dollar people?
I don't think I mentioned any dollar amount ever. I simply asked if we were going to hold all candidates responsible for the criminal behavior of their supporters. We're not likely to find identical situations, but both candidates have accepted money from questionable people.
In another response i mentioned the names Rezko, Blagojevich, Corzine, Neman, Assongba, Cardona, and Dupree. All have had some role in Obama's campaigns and all have been convicted of something.
Clearly Obama is the better choice for progressive appointments to the court. I just find the attacks on associates pointless. Neither candidate is free of corrupting influences.
If I give $50 do I get any access? No! So amounts matter, you made the allegation, back it up with some names and amounts so I can consider your concern, or do you want people to just be suspicious because you say they should be? That sounds like pure spin, isn’t that just a way to deceive not inform? Give some details as people have done here with Romney supporters, it is better to know than to not.
If a candidate learns that a committee that supports him is funded by gangster and prostitution tainted money from another country it would be incumbent that he denounce, renounce and disaffiliate from that, no????
Also it would fall to the authorities such as FBI and FEC to prosecute where possible.
I agree, but again I ask if we're going to hold all candidates to the same standard?
Yes, & Barack Obama released 7 years worth of his tax returns.
Can Mittney live up to this standard?
No he can't. That's why he won't be President.
We have the truth. He's obviously hiding something, or we would have them by NOW.
Come Together NOWWWWWW!
You'e shifted to tax returns now, fine Obama released his, Romney probably should also. You've left unanswered the question of what to do about Obama's corrupt associates and bundlers though.
The president is irrelevant to me, other then his appointments to the Supreme Court. The real power to change things is in the House and Senate. That's where national movements should concentrate their efforts.
The Pres has released his bundlers. Which ones are corrupt.?
Your candidate Romney has refused to release his bundlers (as well as tax returns, and records during Mass governorship,, and details on his activities @Bane) Why? what is the plutocrat Romney hiding.?
Pluto did it! Pluto did it!
Peace
My candidate? When did that happen? This started as a comment about focusing on fund raising individuals instead of the position of either candidate. It's a distraction that carries dangers for both. It doesn't stop with one case it just goes on from one meaningless bit of trivia to another.
I see both men as flawed in their own way and corrupt. In the end I'll vote for the candidate that can appoint, in my opinion, the best judges to the courts.
Ok. That should be easy. Dem appointed judge just overturned NDAA. Repub appointed Judges found in favor of citizens united and limitless money in politics. Dem appointed were against.
Yes it is easy, for me at any rate. I consider the poet of president less relevant then most people. I see the real opportunity for change in the House and Senate.
Ok on may 18th house dems voted overwhelmingly to repeal ndaa. The house repubs defeated it.
Difficult for the individual to do much about that. My original hope for Occupy was that it would push a national agenda and go out and find good people to run for congress. You or I can only vote in one district.
Yes. There is always next time. We can convince enough people to expand their concept of affecting change.
Support the anarchists goal of govt recreation from the bottom up, horizontally, but seek support for reform as well. Reform of current govt can set the groundwork for direct democracy and get some improvement for the 99%.
I know it's a long shot
Personally I can't go along with the anarchist model. I see the general population as having largely ignored the growing corruption in government. Too many don't vote, don't get informed, then if they do vote it's based on a 30 second TV ad. Giving them more power without somehow educating them first would seem foolish and irresponsible to me.
Again I agree. I think the groups necessary for that effort exist. Enough progressives (OWS or not) must and will get together to agitate for issues that matter to them. Somehow it must happen.
Maybe I'm too idealistic.
You are correct. I think we should have mandatory voting, publicly financed campaigns, no commercials (only wkly debates for all candidates in a shortened campiagn), repeal electorla college, add 1000 to House of reps, open primaries.
Thats a start.
None of it will even get a serious debate without a large group advocating it. Rosa Parks stood up, but without the NAACP and it's political and legal actions she'd be unknown today.
We should. Is Obama being funded by any whoremaster you've heard about?
I'm not sure if you are willing to include other crimes besides running a prostitution ring. However, Rezko, Blagojevich, Corzine, Neman, Assongba, Cardona, and Dupree have all played a role in fundraising or donating and have been found guilty of criminal charges.
Doesn't actually matter, you can probably come with a similar list for Romney. By the time someone gets to the presidential level they have been close to many criminals in their quest for money. The point is if you want to use accepting money from criminals as a criteria for eliminating a candidate, then we'd have no candidate.
Come to think of it having no candidate might be the best thing to happen to the country.
You are reaching. None of those listed are giving now anyway. Irrelevant.
What is the plutocrat Romney hiding?
"The point is if you want to use accepting money from criminals as a criteria for eliminating a candidate, then we'd have no candidate. Come to think of it having no candidate might be the best thing to happen to the country."
1- I think well of Blagojevich. He's in jail for being an authentic Democrat who tried to fight for and deliver for working class and modest income people. To think that a politician in this day and age, who has to always be raising money wouldn't auction off a high office he controls is silly. Unless we want only billionaires or candidates backed by billionaire PACS that's what American politics has to be.
I guess I point to Adelson because it's particularly creepy for Mitt the Mormon who claims to share family values with evangelicals to take money raised from prostitution in China, and because Adelson has been pretty clear that his emotional homeland is not in the Western Hemisphere at all, and this should offend US patriots- tht a man who is emotionally the citizen of another country is buying the election of our presidency, with prostitution stained money.
I have no problem banning all private money from politics. Give all candidates blocks of free air time, as say a part of a necessary public service the FCC could require.
It's clear neither candidate comes to the table with clean hands. Romney has the pimp Adelson, Obama the fugitive attempted murderer Cardona.
I see only a couple of paths open for real change. It doesn't take place at the presidential level though. It might be possible through the House and Senate with candidates that are not professional politicians.
Equating Pres Obama with the plutocrat Romney is not honest. They do not compare at all.
Pres Obama has released his donors. Romney is hiding them.
Peace
Doesn't matter as long as what they both are doing is legal. I don't want to waste time being distracted with foolishness about birth certificates, tax returns, college transcripts, treatment of pets.
I'm concerned about their policy positions, their basic attitudes about the nation and government. As far as comparing them is concerned I keep that to myself, only asking anyone that enjoys the mud slinging to look at his candidate too.
At the end of August a trial reopens in Nevada involving Adelson and Steve Jacobs (mistakenly called Jacobson in other comments). Jacobs is suing Adelson for alleged wrongful termination from his job as a Sands executive. Jacobs alleges that he was fired for opposing what he says was Adelson's "prostitution strategy."
http://www.chinahearsay.com/sheldon-adelsons-macanese-hooker-problem/
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigation of Adelson. (My question is- would Obama and Holder have the nerve to move on this? There would be withering counter-fire.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/16/sheldon-adelson_n_1676571.html
That 100 prostitutes and 23 pimps were arrested in Adelson's Macau casino is not an allegation, it's a fact.
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/7578834-macau-police-arrests-more-than-100-prostitutes-at-venetian-casino
I can accept everything you say as fact. It simply doesn't really matter to me. Unless you're making the claim that a presidential candidate was directly involved in a crime. Then I say charge him and toss him in jail.
I find these attacks on Obama or Romney by attacking their associates a childish waste of time. Both men are politicians and therefore somewhat corrupt. The only relevant information for me is which set of policies do I agree with more and which one is going to appoint better judges to the bench.
Well, I hope the religious and patriotic people who are often called "independents" actually get to learn where so much of Romney's campaign money comes from. I'm more interested in how they will respond to learning that Romney and the GOP is largely funded by the prostitution tainted money from China of a man whose patriotic impulses are for a country not even in our hemisphere. John McCain thinks it could blow up into a very big situation. I sort of agree with that, regardless of what you think. I could care less what you think actually, These posts and comments are read by lots of people.
As long as the candidates themselves follow the law, I'm not sure it makes any difference what various fundraisers are accused of or convicted of. Everyone is going to have their own criteria for electing a president though. I'm certainly used to people not caring what I think.
If the tax stuff and the Adelson "whoremaster" stuff convince even two percent of borderline leaning to Romney voters to stay home in six states, that's a success. That ends it for Romney.
If it works for you fine. Personally I hate to use any approach that employes fear or ignorance. I want to vote for someone or some idea, not against some guy that donated to a candidate.
Well one has promised more tax cuts for wealthy and retaining current Bush tax cuts for wealthy. He also promised to roll back the already watered down fin regs.
The other one has promised the opposite.
Those are policy positions.
Much better to base a decision on, instead of who your donors are.
Glad to be of assistance, but I think you probably new all that.
Gonna take a revolution.
Perhaps, but that's a path with too much uncertainty for me. Once we step outside our current legal system there is no telling who or what comes out on top. For all we know the better armed, better organized military or some coalition of right wing groups could come to power in the chaos of revolution. Enough of the population might willingly trade freedom for security.