Marina Bay Sands Casino Hires Law Firm for Money Transfer Probe

Marina Bay Sands has hired a law firm to investigate employees transfers of more than $1 billion of gamblers’ money to third parties.

Dispute resolution and international arbitration specialist Davinder Singh Chambers LLC has been hired for the investigation, according to a «Bloomberg» report citing unnamed sources.

In addition to numerous high-profile lawsuits in banking, debt structuring and fraud, Davinder Singh in Singapore is most notably known for representing Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in a number of defamation cases.

In 2019, MBS faced a lawsuit from patron Wang Xi who alleged that the casino transferred $6.7 million of his money to other gamblers without his knowledge.

The lawsuit was subsequently settled out of court in June with non-admission of liability from both sides and full reimbursement of Wang’s money by MBS.

Marina Bay Sands (MBS) continues to work closely with its regulators to monitor MBS’s compliance with all legal obligations, the casino said.

Previously, law firm Hogan Lovells reviewed more than 3,000 letters of authorization from 2013-2017 for fund transferals from patrons to third parties totaling about $1 billion.

It was found that there were multiple instances where employees did not comply with proper standards, filling payment details on pre-signed or photo-copied authorization forms, according to the report, as well as cases where original documents were destroyed.

Of the total amount transferred, $268 million was based on multiple authorization letters that «bore signatures that appeared to be similar» and another $561 million was transferred by a concentrated group of employees – both of which led to red flags raised.

Following Wang’s case, MBS faced increased scrutiny from the likes of the Singapore police and the Casino Regulatory Authority which said it would continue to exercise close oversight to ensure that MBS’ measures are effective.

But local authorities are not the only bodies stepping up scrutiny against Las Vegas Sands’ Singapore unit. The U.S. Department of Justice also launched its own probe, including involvement of the casino’s former compliance chief to provide an interview or documents on money laundering facilitation” and any abuse of internal financial controls.