Asian casino junket operator SunCity Group will reportedly start shepherding some of their high-rollers to Okada Manila in the fourth quarter.

Quoting a Morgan Stanley note, GGRAsia reported that SunCity is expected to join by the last quarter of the year to help ramp the integrated resort.

“More are to join in the fourth quarter 2017, including Suncity,” Morgan Stanley analysts Alex Poon and Praveen Choudhary said.

Still on Okada Manila, the international brokerage firm noted the rise of Chinese visitors in the newly opened integrated resort. Data showed that the number of Chinese tourists in the Philippines grew by 33 percent year-on-year in the first six months of the year.

The stinking news of the alleged sewage overflows inside the casino of Imperial Pacific International (IPI) has found its way right under the noses of Saipan legislators.

Saipan Tribune reported that members of the Senate Gaming Committee has expressed alarm over reports that Imperial Pacific Resort is facing a sewage overflow debacle.

Shocked by what he heard from the report of the casino commission, Saipan Senator Arnold Palacios said the sewage leak could start a public health nightmare in the facility should casino operator Imperial Pacific International will not act on the problem immediately.

Palacios and his colleagues expressed a big concern if it will be found that the leak is indeed wastewater.

With five years and a under his belt, Calvin Ayre has returned to the media scene and has chosen to conduct his first video interview dedicated to the subject of Bitcoin here in London with CalvinAyre.com.

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British Columbia’s attorney general is slamming the province’s former government for burying a report into allegedly rampant money laundering at one of its land-based casinos.

On Friday, Attorney General David Eby released a year-old report into allegations of money laundering at the River Rock Casino Resort in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver. A redacted version of the report can be read here.

The report reveals that River Rock was prone to accepting single cash buy-ins in excess of C$500k (US $405k), mostly from “high roller Asian VIP clients” who often displayed “no known source of funds.”

River Rock reportedly accepted $13.5m in $20 bills in July 2015 alone, with a lot of these large transactions involving “unsourced cash” being “dropped off at the casino or ‘just-off’ casino property for patrons at unusual times, generally late at night.”

Former Amaya Gaming CEO David Baazov is being sued by a Dubai investor who claims Baazov fraudulently used the investor’s name to build support for an Amaya takeover bid.

On Friday, La Presse reported that KBC Aldini Capital president Kalani Lal had filed a lawsuit in Dubai in January accusing Baazov and his longtime financial services partner Canaccord Genuity of fraudulently using Lal’s name and signature to boost Baazov’s late-2016 bid to acquire Amaya.

Last November, Amaya announced that Baazov, who had parted ways with the company several months earlier to defend himself against criminal charges of insider trading, had made a C$24 per share offer to buy a controlling stake in Amaya and take the company private.

To support his bid, Baazov filed papers with the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) stating that he’d lined up $3.65b in financial commitments from four investment firms, including the Dubai-based KBC Aldini Capital.

Finland’s newly consolidated gambling monopoly is blaming a paucity of major lottery jackpots for its falling sales.

The new Veikkaus, which began life at the start of the year after the merger of Finland’s three previously separate state-owned gambling monopolies, reported sales of just over €2.1b in the first half of 2017.

The sales figures marks a decline of 0.5% from what the Veikkaus (lotteries and betting), Ray (slot machines and Fintoto (horseracing) divisions generated on their own in the same period last year. Profit fared even worse, falling 3.3% to €665.7m.

Regardless, Veikkaus CEO Olli Sarekoski hailed the operator passing the 2m milestone of registered customers, which Sarekoski claimed represented two-thirds of Finland’s adult gamblers.

Don’t look now, but the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma’s real-money online gambling plans took a step closer to reality after securing a gaming license from Isle of Man (IOM) regulators.

On Thursday, the Iowa Tribe announced that Ioway Internet Gaming Enterprise Limited had been issued an online gaming license by the IOM Gambling Supervision Commission earlier this month. Ioway, which was registered in the IOM in January, is co-owned by the tribe and its sketchy online technology partner, the Florida-based Universal Entertainment Group (UEG).

UEG has been trying to launch a tribal online gambling site for several years now, having first hooked up with Oklahoma’s Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes on a deal to launch PokerTribes.com, a real-money online gambling site that would accept customers from outside the United States.

That highly controversial deal fell through before the site took a single wager, leading to reports that the National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC) was investigating UEG, whose owner Fred Khalilian has been the subject of multi-million-dollar deceptive telemarketing judgments by the Federal Trade Commission.

On Thursday, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne addressed the United Nations General Assembly, reiterating his call for the United States to respect the decision of the World Trade Organization that the US’ prohibitionist stance against Antigua-based online gambling operators is in violation of America’s international trade obligations.

Browne also reminded the US government that the $270m+ that the WTO has ruled the US must pay Antigua is needed more urgently than ever following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Irma on the island of Barbuda. The full speech can be viewed and read below.

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National Statement by the

New Jersey has sold more than $68 million in bonds to fill its legal war chest and fund its tax-appeal settlements with the former and current Atlantic City casinos.

The Press of Atlantic City reported that New Jersey issued bonds at 4.1 percent interest rates on Wednesday amid dwindling legal funds.

The state said the bonds, which was sold in an attractive rate, will fuel their legal settlement agreements with Bally’s Atlantic City, Caesars Atlantic City, Golden Nugget Atlantic City, Harrah’s Resort, Tropicana Atlantic City, the former Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort and the former Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino.

New Jersey designated former U.S. Sen. Jeffrey S. Chiesa to lead the financial recovery effort for Atlantic City.

A strip club that once operated inside the now-shuttered Trump Taj Mahal is standing up for its right to offer adult entertainment should the new owners plan to bring Hard Rock Hotel & Casino to the property.

Philadelphia Magazine reported that Boardwalk 1000, LLC has brought SCORES Atlantic City to court after the strip club owners contends its right to reopen their business should the shuttered hotel comes back to life in the form of Hard Rock.

The Taj Mahal officially closed last October, putting nearly 3,000 of its staff out of work. Donald Trump’s buddy Carl Icahn and the union of casino workers have failed to agree on a new contract that will cover health insurance and pension benefits.

In March, HRI struck a deal with Icahn to acquire the shuttered Atlantic City casino and promptly announced plans to spend $375 million remodeling the joint as the new music-themed Hard Rock Atlantic City, which is set to re-open in summer 2018.