Adelson denies personal interest in Las Vegas journal

Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson dismissed claims that the recent purchase of the Las Vegas Review-Journal was to influence a lawsuit against him, noting that members of his family made the buy, not him.

In a recent interview with the Macau Daily Times, the Jewish billionaire explained that his relatives manage their own affairs.

“You don’t tell your children what to do, I can’t tell my children what to do,” he said. “They wanted to buy the newspaper so, they bought the newspaper. I don’t have anything to do with it, I have no financial interest. My money that the children have with which to buy the newspaper is their inheritance. I don’t want to spend money on a newspaper.”

A December report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal revealed tensions between the paper’s staff and Adelson, who officially purchased the publication for $140 million on December 10. According to the article, the management of the newspaper about a month ago instructed three of its reporters to direct all of their efforts into covering three local county judges. One of the judges — District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez — is involved in the long-running Jacobs v. Sands case involving Adelson’s casino.

Adelson had reportedly clashed with Judge Gonzalez, sometimes refusing to answer her questions while on the stand and allegedly offering support to a Las Vegas attorney in starting a campaign against her, the article said.

Mike Hengel, the paper’s editor, stepped down shortly afterwards.

However, Adelson told the Macau Daily Times that the paper was purchase purely as an investment.

“The Review Journal in Vegas makes money and the children can’t make much money when interest rates are at zero,” he said. “They feel that there’s a lot of history of profitability and we kept the operation in the hands of the [previous] owners. We’re not operating it. So I’ll probably never talk to the editor.”

As an example of his hands-off attitude Adelson cited the Israel Hayom newspaper, an Israeli publication that he started in 2007.

“I buy my paper and newsprint and I print my own newspapers,” he said. “I’ve got [hundreds] employees, but you know how often I talk to the editor? Just when I go there about four times a year. I never call them.”

“We have about 200 journalists at the Israel Today newspaper,” he noted referring to Israel Hayom by its English translation. “You could call any one of them and you say, ‘Did anybody from the Adelson family ever tell you what to write or what not to write?’ and they will tell you, ‘No.’ If somebody’s going to write something bad about me and [even if] there’s no justification for it, I won’t know about it until after it’s done.”

The Jacobs v. Sands case, brought against Adelson and his Las Vegas Sands Corp. by former employee Steven Jacobs, gained international attention after Jacobs — who once ran Sands’ operations in Macau — claimed that Adelson fired him for trying to sever ties to Chinese organized crime triads and had ignored illegal activities at his resorts.