Resorts Wins Permit Renewal in New Jersey
A state commission Tuesday renewed Resorts International Inc.’s gaming license for its Atlantic City casino, rejecting a recommendation by investigators that the permit be revoked because of the owners’ business dealings in the Bahamas.
Those dealings include a total of $421,000 in payments that indirectly reached the Bahamian prime minister when Resorts was negotiating to open a casino-hotel in Freeport.
The Casino Control Commission voted 3 to 1 to renew the license with minor conditions that it said were designed to improve internal company controls. The vote capped 12 days of hearings on the Resorts license, which was to expire at midnight Tuesday.
Would Consider Appeal
State Atty. Gen. Irwin I. Kimmelman said he would consider appealing the decision to the courts and that questions about the conduct of some of the company’s top executives had not been fully resolved.
The vote was greeted by applause, and Resorts attorney Joel Sterns said: “The conditions are conditions we readily accept. . . . I am reasonably confident we won’t have these problems with anybody again.”
The four commissioners criticized business practices by Resorts, which opened the first casino-hotel in Atlantic City in 1978, a year after the state legalized casino gambling in the seaside resort.
“The evidence presented at this hearing reveals a degree of general corporate laxity and imprudence which, while not so serious as to provide a basis for denying re-licensure, is clearly inappropriate for a company operating in this most regulated of all industries,” said Vice Chairman E. Kenneth Burdge.
Chairman Walter N. Read cast the dissenting vote, saying he was “particularly troubled by what I perceive to be a lack of business prudence and financial responsibility.”
He said Resorts’ top officials “facilitated, even unwittingly, highly questionable payments” to a Bahamian businessman and “ultimately to the prime minister.”
Outside Directors
In renewing the permit, the casino commission said that, by Resorts’ annual stockholders meeting in May, half of the board of directors must be from outside the company. The five current members of the six-position board are all from within the company.
The casino commission also said that board Chairman James Crosby and President I. G. (Jack) Davis must resign from Resorts’ audit committee and that the group must be composed of outside directors.
The hearings focused on payments from Resorts and a group of investors, including Crosby, which indirectly reached Bahamian Prime Minister Lynden O. Pindling in 1980 and 1981.
