WASHINGTON, October 25 (RIA Novosti) – International gambling giant Caesars Entertainment withdrew from a proposed casino development project in Boston after investigators found links between the company and an alleged Russian mobster, a report submitted to the Massachusetts Gaming Commission says.
The 558-page report to the gaming commission says that, in 2013, a subsidiary of Caesars entered into a licensing deal in Las Vegas with luxury hotel chain Gansevoort, even though Caesars’ investigators found ties between one of Gansevoort’s principals, Arik Krislin, and Russian organized crime.
It further alleges that a company owned by Kislin sponsored a US visa for alleged Russian hit man Anton Malevsky, and was involved in international money-laundering.
A memorandum submitted to Caesars by its own investigator last year, and cited in the investigative report, says Kislin was “one of three people authorized to give [financial] instructions to a company in Liechtenstein now identified as a front for the Ismailovskaya organized-crime group…”
The Massachusetts investigators also raised concerns about Caesars’ sizeable debt and a civil suit brought by a “high-roller” gambler who notched up millions of dollars of gambling debt that he couldn’t pay, who accused the company of keeping him “plied with liquor and prescription pain medication as part of a plan to keep him gambling,”and about the employment history of a Caesar’s executive who had earlier been chief executive of two companies that were scrutinized by the US Department of Justice for illegal Internet gaming operations.
Caesars withdrew from the $1 billion Massachusetts casino project last week after learning that “state investigators would recommend to the gambling commission that Caesars be disqualified from bidding for a Massachusetts license,” the Boston Globe newspaper said.
Caesars Chairman and CEO Gary Loveman described the findings of the Massachusetts state casino investigators as “extraordinary,” in comments made to Bloomberg Businessweek Sunday.
