Melco Resorts & Entertainment Ltd Chairman and CEO Lawrence Ho has openly criticized his former partners Crown Resorts, claiming the Australian-based company had angered Chinese officials with their “totally separate” marketing activities on the mainland.
In an interview with The Financial Times published this week, Mr Ho pointed to the arrests of 18 Crown Resorts staff in October and a similar operation against South Korean operators in 2015 as a result of their indiscreet operations.
“In all of those instances you had casino sales people running around offering credit, talking about collection . . . it wasn’t discreet,” he said.
“That’s what caught their attention, ‘like what the hell, you’re deliberately spitting on our faces’.”
Mr Ho added that although he recommended lawyers to Crown resorts, he didn’t become involved because, “our marketing activities and Crown’s were totally separate.”
Crown Resorts still has 14 employees detained in China along with two former staff members.
Only last month Crown sold off its remaining 11.2% stake in Melco Resorts & Entertainment Ltd, bringing to an end a 12-year partnership between the two companies that had seen then launch flagship Macau properties City of Dreams and Studio City as well as City of Dreams Manila in the Philippines.
In an exclusive interview in the June edition of Inside Asian Gaming to be released this week, Mr Ho said that the arrests of the Crown resorts employees was not the “primary factor” in the split but that he didn’t know, “whether it was a factor for Crown in terms of why they wanted to get out. Was it a factor at back of my mind and in the back of the Crown guys’ minds? I’m sure it was one of them.”
Mr Ho also admitted a conviction could spell problems for the industry’s hopes of legalizing casinos in Japan.
“Naturally, the people in China, the [Crown employees] that have been arrested haven’t been convicted yet, so let’s say they’re innocent. Let’s say if they were convicted, then it would raise issues for Japan and for both the [operating jurisdictions] but especially for Macau, since Macau is part of China.
