Toasting Ocier-Tan merger?

Top guns Andrew Tan and Willy Ocier were both seen in China in serious huddle and spending a hell of a lot of time together. The buzz during the President’s China trip is that both Willy and Andrew are mulling the possibility of merging their big time casino operations. The rumor was further fueled by the presence of presidential close friend Bong Naguiat – chairman of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. or PAGCOR, which has the mandate to grant licenses and regulate the gaming industry in the country.

After all, Andrew’s Alliance Global Corp. owns the Resorts World casino and leisure complex in Pasay City which has been attracting a lot of tourists and gamblers from China and other countries in Asia. As a matter of fact, the casino’s success prompted Cagayan de Oro Congressman Rufus Rodriguez to file a house resolution seeking to investigate the contract between PAGCOR and Resorts World (the first PAGCOR-licensed casino to operate in a joint venture with the Genting Group) to find out if the 75-25 deal favoring the private casino operator has been disadvantageous to the government. Rodriguez found it disturbing that of the P12-billion gross winnings of Resorts World last year, PAGCOR’s share amounted to “only” P3 billion. No wonder Tan is building another five-star hotel with 350 rooms to accommodate the growing number of visitors to Resorts World Manila.

On the other hand, Belle Corporation has earmarked P5 billion to expand its Belle Grande hotel-casino project in PAGCOR’s Entertainment City complex along the reclaimed portion of Manila Bay. Willy predicts that the integrated casino resort complex is going to have all the elements of a real entertainment city and will be “the best thing that will happen to Philippine tourism.”

The recent controversies involving PAGCOR has prompted calls for its privatization, saying the agency should stop having direct involvement in gambling operations and instead, just limit its functions to that of a regulatory and licensing/franchising entity which is, after all, part of its primary mandate. Should the Tan-Ocier merger push through, you can expect Congress to squawk since the merged group will have a monopoly of the gaming industry in the country.

More leaks on the WikiLeaks

The WikiLeaks website is becoming the new gossip portal for rumor and scandal watchers especially on the political and diplomatic front, judging from the 250,000 raw, unfiltered and unedited (meaning names and sources have not been taken out) diplomatic cables it has made available on the Internet. However, it would seem that it’s now payback time - with some of the biggest media organizations that have collaborated with WikiLeaks in the past denouncing its founder Julian Assange and his group for having sloppy security and for showing utter disregard for the safety of confidential sources. A security breach has inadvertently made a password available - which in turn opened the floodgates for virtually everyone to access the documents in their raw form, unlike before when access was restricted and there were even times when the site was unavailable.

It’s clear however that a lot of those diplomatic cables are basically, for all intents and purposes, just personal opinions of diplomats or individuals, who simply reflect their thoughts on certain personalities, issues or events in their posts, and are really no different from the opinions reflected by newspaper columnists and even broadcasters or commentators. In any case, even the previous supporters of WikiLeaks, such as the alleged diplomatic cable leaker Pfc. Bradley Manning, have expressed disappointment for the group’s failure to handle the explosive treasure trove of information with care.

Spy tidbit

– The wife of former Acting US Ambassador to the Philippines Mike Malinowski, Karen, succumbed to cancer last Saturday at the Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC. Mike was the acting US chief of mission at the height of EDSA II, during which time he encouraged then-President Joseph Estrada to follow the Constitutional process and submit himself to impeachment. Both Mike and Karen made many Filipino friends during their four-year stay in the Philippines.

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