Posted on 11/26/2007 12:04:27 PM PST by calcowgirl
Nine days after registering his presidential exploratory committee last November, Rudolph Giuliani appeared in Singapore to help a Las Vegas developer make a pitch for a $3.5 billion casino resort.
Though the bid ultimately failed, and there was nothing illegal about the involvement, it drew Giuliani into a complex partnership with the family of a controversial Hong Kong billionaire who has ties to the regime of North Korea's Kim Jong Il and has been linked to international organized crime by the U.S. government.
...
Giuliani's public involvement in the gaming bid began at a September 2006 news conference in Singapore hosted by Mark Advent, CEO of Eighth Wonder LLC, a Las Vegas development company heading one of three consortia competing to build the Sentosa Integrated Resort.
...
...Advent said Giuliani's vetting only extended to Advent and his Eighth Wonder colleagues, and that Giuliani had no role in evaluating Eighth Wonder's outside partners.
Those partners would include Melco PBL, a joint venture based in Hong Kong which joined the project...
Melco PBL is a collaboration between Publishing and Broadcasting Limited, an Australian firm run by James Packer, son of the late media magnate Kerry Packer, and Melco International Development, run by Lawrence Ho, son of Stanley Ho, a colorful casino tycoon.
At 85, Stanley Ho remains the dominant player in the gambling industry on Macau, an 11-square-mile spit of land near Hong Kong on China's southeast coast.
...
Although Stanley Ho has never been charged with a crime, the U.S. government's 2000 International Crime Threat Assessment described him as "a reputed organized crime figure."
... In March 2003, the South China Morning Post, the main English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, reported that Stanley Ho conveyed an offer of asylum in North Korea by Kim to Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
This is a long article and difficult to excerpt.
I recommend reading the whole article.
The more we hear about Rudy, the more he smells
His problems will be exploited by the Dems if he is the nominee
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Oops!
I don’t consider it appropriate for public officials to advocate on behalf of gambling interests. Yes gambling is legal, but there has been so much mob connection to it over the years, I would refrain from any activity other than oversight. Even then I would seek to allow law enforcement to do it’s work, and would be very careful what legislation I would sign on to involving the industry.
Yes, the dems think they should be the party of the Chinese agents. Too bad the pubs insist on giving them such heah to head competition in this area.
AH... HAH!!! Great Post!!! Knowledge is power and you are rapidly developing into a “POWER FREEPER!!!” (the rest of us depend on you for our “fix”!!!)
I proudly post only by reading the title, or a portion thereof.
(I'm stealing part of an old tagline Lazamataz used to use)
According to Wikipedia, Stanley Ho seems almost like a model citizen (except for the 4-wife polygamy thingie). ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Ho
LOL!
Another thing he has in common with Hillary.
Chinese criminal backers.
Interesting.
BTTT
Lots of moolah in development.
http://www.sentosa.com.sg/corporate/index.html
They’re into leisure..
Politics has definitely expanded Giuliani’s business connections, sort of like the Clintons, and he would look cute bundled in pink, at the arm of a high roller.
“proudly posting without reading the article since ____”? :)
Far Eastern Economic Review. Hong Kong: May 2007.
(snip)
Mr. Ho’s alleged links to underworld figures first became a problem when he tried to expand his interests in Australia’s lucrative gambling industry ... In 1992, Mr. Ho tried and failed to buy a 50% stake in Perth’s Burswood casino in Western Australia. A year later, he tendered-equally unsuccessfully-in Sydney for the Pyrmont Bay casino, which later became Star City. Mr. Ho did not show his frustrations openly, but another executive of his Shun Tak Group of companies spoke at an Australian business lunch in 1995 and warned that “racist policies” could be damaging to Australia’s foreign-investment potential.
The now defunct New South Wales licensing board, however, saw it in a different light. Its report on Mr. Ho is stamped “never to be released,” but it was reported in the Australian press at the time that he was deemed “an unsuitable person to hold a casino license in Australia.”
In 1996, Mr. Ho faced similar problems in Canada when he applied for casino licenses in Vancouver and Niagara Falls in partnership with his daughters, Daisy and Pansy, who are Canadian passport holders. The Hos’ bids were not approved by the government of British Columbia. The exact reason is not known as the Canadian province has strict privacy laws, but, the New York antigambling coalition asserts, the refusal came “following criminal checks.” Four years later, a report by Canada’s security Intelligence Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police triggered an investigation by authorities in the Philippines into a bid by Mr. Ho to obtain a license for a floating restaurant and casino. According to the New York coalition, Mr. Ho was asked to appear before the Philippine “House of Representatives Committee to answer questions relating to his ties to triad groups (and) money laundering... but he flatly refused to cooperate with officials.”
One of the few names that has been mentioned in connection with Mr. Ho’s alleged criminal links is Wong Sing-wa, the head of the Macau- and Hong Kong-based Talented Dragon investment firm who in the 1990s acquired an agreement with STDM to run a VIP room in the Mandarin hotel in the territory. He was also, in 1990, appointed North Korea’s unofficial representative in Macau. Mr. Wong’s D.P.R.K.-Macau Travel Agency was authorized to issue visas for North Korea and he worked closely with Zokwang Trading, Pyongyang’s then main commercial arm in Macau, which fled the territory in late 2005, when U.S. authorities sanctioned its banker, Banco Delta Asia, for laundering money on behalf of the North Korean regime.
That be the one. Laz still around? He is always worth a double dose of laughs.
He’s still here, although not as often as before.
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