Las Vegas Sands Corp. sells the company’s assets in Las Vegas to focus instead on growth in Asia. The issue of renewing Macau’s gambling license (operating permit) threatens to become a bargaining chip for the Chinese Communist Party. Pictured is the Sands Macao resort on Feb. 5, 2020. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
As early as last October, when its founder Sheldon Adelson was still alive, the Sands Group began to divest itself of its Venetian, Palazzo and Sands Expo and Convention Center. Center).
The move by Sands is widely seen as the result of the huge impact of the Communist virus (Wuhan virus, New Crown virus) Epidemic on its operations – a temporary shutdown, a reduction in visitors, and even a significant reduction in its business clientele, an important source of revenue, which has caused the company’s revenue to drop by at least 47%, and in the first nine months of 2020 alone, Sands’ net loss of more than $1.3 billion.
In 2019, before the epidemic, Sands generated about 85 percent of its revenue from its real estate business in Asia. In a statement following the sale, Sands CEO Robert Goldstein said, “Asia remains the backbone of the company, and our growth in Macau and Singapore remains our focus.”
Sands also underperformed in both Singapore and Macau last year. Its Singapore subsidiary, Marina Bay Sands (MBS), saw its full-year earnings before interest, taxes and amortization fall 76.9 percent to $383 million, while Sands China’s net income plunged nearly 81 percent to $1.69 billion last year.
Macau’s gambling license renewal may become a bargaining chip for the Chinese Communist Party
However, if Sands decides to completely shift its focus to China, there are a number of uncertainties, the biggest of which could be the expiration of Sands’ gambling license (operating permit) in Macau in June 2022, by which Time it will still be a question of whether it can be renewed smoothly.
As early as late 2018, the media suspected, when reporting on the delay in announcing the renewal of Macau’s gambling license, that the Macau authorities might be waiting for instructions from Beijing. The article quoted Macau current affairs commentator So Man Yan as saying, “It is so obvious that one of the main reasons for the Macau government’s delay in announcing the license renewal arrangement is that it is waiting for instructions from the central government.” Since three of the total six licensed gaming companies are US-owned (including Sands’ Venetian Macao), this could be an important bargaining chip for the Chinese Communist Party in the US-China trade war.
Adelson’s role is a mystery, suspected of being controlled by the Chinese Communist Party
Like other U.S. business and financial giants that have found a sweet spot in mainland China, Sands founder Adelson has been repeatedly exposed as playing a major role in the political battle between the United States and China.
The Independent newspaper reported on Adelson’s death, calling him a Republican “power broker”.
According to Guo Wengui, a Chinese tycoon living in exile in the United States, the Chinese Communist Party used the renewal of Macau’s gambling license as leverage to force Adelson to pressure President Donald Trump in the U.S. trade war. Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping told Adelson that he could not only renew Sands’ gambling license in Macau, but also give Sands a gaming license in Hainan Province, provided that Trump would not be re-elected.
Adelson is the Republican Party’s biggest moneymaker, having given Trump the biggest financial support in the 2016 election and in the Mueller investigation into Trump’s so-called “Russiagate,” and he is considered the financial backbone of Trump’s re-election campaign.
But there are different reports in the media about Adelson’s attitude toward Trump. Back in September 2019, it was reported that Adelson had warned Trump that an escalation in the U.S.-China trade war would hurt his 2020 re-election campaign.
According to Politico, in August 2020, less than three months before the election, Trump complained in a phone call about why Adelson was not doing more to support his re-election, and Adelson did not respond again. But the outlet reported in September that the Adelsons had donated $75 million to the Republican Party’s super PAC (political action committee) for Trump’s general election in battleground states.
Sands bribed top Chinese Communist Party officials to get Macau gambling license
Sands also spent a lot of money on its initial entry into the mainland China market, and in 2013, the British newspaper The Independent had an in-depth investigation into an incident in which Sands bribed top Chinese Communist Party officials, including Qian Qichen, in order to obtain a gaming license for Macau in mainland China.
The case was revealed when Richard Suen, a Hong Kong businessman who brokered the deal between Sands and senior Chinese Communist Party officials, sued Sands in the U.S. Nevada Supreme Court for breach of contract and claiming brokerage fees.
On July 28, 2016, the judge ultimately ruled that Suen’s statement that he “arranged a meeting between Sands and then-Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen and Beijing Mayor Liu Qi in order for Sands to be granted a Macau gambling license” was credible.
The Independent found through more than 1,000 pages of Sands’ business records in China and interviews with former Sands executives and others that Sands invested $70 million in mainland China, including sponsorship of a mainland Chinese basketball team, but that millions of dollars of that money went unaccounted for. Reports suspect that the money was used by Sands to bribe individuals.
Sands to increase investment in China in the future, fearing that it will be difficult to withdraw
Some believe that, in addition to the uncertainty of the extension of Macau’s gambling license, Sands’ continued growth in investment in mainland China will make it even more impossible for it to withdraw, and its “bets” in mainland China will increase, the risk will also be greater.
Since the Sands Group obtained a gaming license for Macao in 2002, becoming the first foreign gaming group to be licensed in Macao, the scale of Sands’ investment in China (Macao) has grown dozens of times. The initial investment in the Sands Macao hotel, which opened in May 2004, was US$265 million; the Venetian Macao resort, which opened in August 2007, was a US$2.4 billion investment; and the US$12 billion investment, completed in 2010, was for a series of premium resort blocks with a total of 20,000 hotel rooms.
According to the Sands China Ltd. website, the company’s properties now include Sands Macao, The Venetian Macao, The Plaza Macao, The Parisian Macao and The Londoner Macao. The company also owns one of the largest convention centers in Asia, the CotaiExpo, and the CotaiArena, the largest performance venue in Macau.
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