Trump Protege's Remote Casino In Saipan Raided By FBI (Money Laundering)
Best Sunshine Live is a casino run by Trump protege Mark Brown on Saipan, a US territory in the Pacific off the east coast of the Philipines. It was raided today by the FBI.
It opened last year and doesn't appear terribly busy or overrun with high rollers- yet it beats the most prosperous gambling operations in the world which are located in Macau. The only way to account for the numbers coming out of this new casino is either inflated numbers or money laundering.
Some of the names involved? ex-CIA director Woolsey, ex-FBI director Freeh and former Governor Ed Rendell, Haley Barbour and David Patterson.
FBI Visits Office of Saipan Casino Run by Trump Protege
Agents from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation visited an office belonging to the operator of a casino on the remote U.S. island of Saipan that has attracted attention for its huge revenues, according to a local legislator and residents.
FBI personnel, accompanied by uniformed police officers, arrived Thursday morning at a local office used by Imperial Pacific International Holdings Ltd., the Hong Kong-based company that owns the Best Sunshine Live casino, local residents said. They stayed for several hours, with local police blocking access to the building.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-30/fbi-agents-visit-office-of-saipan-casino-run-by-trump-protege
Big Money, Big Questions at Trump Protege's Remote Casino
Nothing about the facility, which opened last year on the U.S. island of Saipan, hints at the money flowing through it—table for table, far more than at the biggest casinos in Macau, the world’s number-one gambling capital. Nor is there any sign of the connections of its owner, Hong Kong-listed Imperial Pacific International Holdings Ltd., which has a market value of $2.4 billion.
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Those volumes of cash are drawing the attention of law-enforcement officials. The U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which is responsible for alerting prosecutors and other authorities of suspicious financial flows, has taken notice of the activity at Best Sunshine......
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The story of how Saipan’s casino came to enjoy such puzzling success is a tale of money and political intrigue that stretches across the Pacific, connecting it to top power-brokers in Washington and New York, 14 time zones away. But above all, it links the island with the burgeoning ranks of China’s super-rich and the fathomless wealth, obtained legitimately or otherwise, that they’re seeking to move around the world...
Large-scale capital flight may be what accounts for the revenues at Best Sunshine, according to executives at three Macau gambling promoters, who spoke on the condition they not be identified bad-mouthing a competitor. The numbers are simply impossible if they are not inflated or facilitating money-laundering, they said.
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(Trump's protege) Mark Brown left Trump in 2005, heading to Macau to oversee Las Vegas Sands Corp.’s project to build a replica of the Venetian hotel. He departed in 2009; two years later Las Vegas Sands was plunged into turmoil by a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in Macau over a period that overlapped with Brown’s tenure. In 2012, Australian regulators denied him a license to work at Sydney’s Star Casino for reasons they didn’t disclose.
Las Vegas Sands this year settled the allegations for $9 million without admitting guilt. Brown was not accused of wrongdoing, and said he was never involved in the investigation
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-11-13/obscure-casino-run-by-a-trump-protege-is-raising-big-questions
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