When the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board awarded a slots casino license to Mount Airy Lodge owner Louis DeNaples, it required him to have an independent audit committee. This was something required of no other slots casino licensee.
The state law that legalized slots gambling and its regulatory structure doesn't mention such audit committees. It's not clear why one was made a condition of the Mount Airy license. Nor is it clear how such a panel would work, what its responsibilities would be or what kind of oversight there would be of it.
What is known is that there is a state grand jury panel investigating whether Mr. DeNaples misled the Gaming Control Board about alleged ties to organized crime in order to win a slots license. The slots law prohibits casino licensees from having any links to organized crime. But independent federal and state investigation are probing various aspects of whether Mr. DeNaples has ties to reputed Bufalino crime family chief William D'Elia. Mr. DeNaples has denied having any.
The grand jury is still conducting its inquiries and hasn't filed any charges against Mr. DeNaples. However, the federal investigation has filed charges against Mr. D'Elia for money laundering and solicitation of murder.
In the 1970s, Mr. DeNaples and two others were charged with defrauding the federal government of $525,000 in connection with the cleanup after Hurricane Agnes. One of Mr. DeNaples' main businesses is the Keystone Sanitary Landfill in Lackawanna County. The trial resulted in a hung jury and Mr. DeNaples pleaded no contest. After the trial, four members of the Bufalino crime family were convicted for their role in bribing a jury member in the DeNaples trial.
Is any of this connected to the Gaming Board's conditioning Mount Airy's slots license on creation of an audit committee? If so, why was this license awarded?
But these aren't the only questions. As established by the Gaming Board, Mr. DeNaples nominated members of the audit committee and the Gaming Board approves his nominees. So far it has resulted in nominations being put forward and then pulled back, some because they had direct ties to Mr. DeNaples.
It's hard to see how such a process could result in an independent audit committee. Clyde Barrow, who specializes in gambling issues at the University of Massachusetts, said, "I have never heard of anything of this magnitude that is so blatantly a conflict of interest." We agree.
Not surprisingly, all of this has at least one state lawmaker, albeit a Republican and a gambling opponent, raising concerns. Rep. Paul Clymer, R-Bucks, has asked Gaming Board Chairperson Mary DiGiacomo Colins some basic questions, such as why the audit panel was created in the first place, for one licensee and not others, what its members will do, how much they will get paid, and whether its work will be open to the public. These are good questions and they demand good answers.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment