State gaming commissioners stopped short of faulting Wynn Resorts for failing to disclose an IRS request for documents a month before it won the Boston-area casino license — a probe the commission acknowledged Wynn only brought to its attention after a newspaper report.
Commissioner James F. McHugh said the gaming panel's Investigations and Enforcement Bureau (IEB) needs to report back on the nature of the IRS inquiry — which the Wall Street Journal reported is linked to a federal money laundering probe — to determine if Wynn should have notified them earlier.
"There's a difference between an inquiry about customers and an inquiry about them," McHugh said yesterday, after the commission's investigative chief gave her first public report on the matter. "There's an inquiry about them that's routine, there's an inquiry about them that is not routine. Until we know the answers to those kinds of questions, we're not in a position to make a judgment about whether or not we should have known."
IEB director Karen Wells said yesterday the IRS inquiry was brought to the commission's attention when Wynn's general counsel emailed her the Nov. 20 Wall Street Journal article. Wells said her agency's review has not yet turned up any summonses or subpoenas of Wynn employees.
"To my knowledge, at this time, one does not exist," Wells said.
Under the state's gaming law, licensees must "upon receipt of a criminal or civil process compelling testimony or production of documents in connection with a civil or criminal investigation, immediately disclose such information to the commission."
McHugh said, "It sounds to me like a process was not served … the statutory and regulatory obligation to report was not triggered."
But former state Inspector General Gregory Sullivan, now at the Pioneer Institute, said Wynn should have disclosed the inquiry considering the feds had recently reached a settlement with Las Vegas Sands.
"Since Las Vegas Sands had settled a high-roller money laundering investigation by the IRS for $47 million a year earlier, I would have expected the applicant to disclose to the Gaming Commission an administrative summons from the IRS criminal division for information about high-roller money laundering," Sullivan said.
Wynn VP Robert DeSalvio declined comment yesterday, referring questions to a company spokesman who did not respond to an inquiry.
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