Pachinko king Kazuo Okada denies charges in Hong Kong arrest

Name: SCMP
Telephone: +852-2680-8888

Japanese billionaire who helped Steve Wynn build his casino empire vows to regain control of his company, Universal Entertainment

Reading Time:3 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Kazuo Okada, former majority shareholder of Wynn Resorts, poses for a portrait in Central. Photo: Winson Wong

Muhammad Cohen

Published: 10:15pm, 10 Aug 2018Updated: 12:01pm, 16 Jan 2019

Kazuo Okada is a true maverick, an unconventional Japanese self-made billionaire who takes big chances. He helped Steve Wynn fund the casinos with Wynn’s name on top, then built one with his own name on top in Manila. As fraud and bribery allegations mounted against Okada, the embattled pachinko billionaire always presented reasonable explanations. But with Okada detained and questioned by Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption on fraud allegations, he may have run out of excuses.

On Monday, Universal Entertainment, the company Okada founded in 1969 to repair jukeboxes, announced he had been arrested by the ICAC. “All the allegations made against me are entirely false,” Okada tells This Week In Asia. “[Universal] is simply attempting to irreparably damage my reputation. I am confident that the investigation will prove the absurdity of these allegations and that I will be able to regain control of the companies I founded.”

Okada is suing his family in Hong Kong to take back Universal.

“Mr Okada himself is not a threat nor risk to the company,” a Universal spokesperson says.

The septuagenarian with jet black hair and ramrod posture was ousted in June last year as chairman of Universal and its Philippine subsidiary, Tiger Resort, Leisure and Entertainment, operator of the open but unfinished US$2.4 billion Okada Manila casino hotel.

Wynn, who once called Okada his “best friend”, used the Philippine project as a pretext to remove Okada as Wynn Resorts vice-chairman and redeem his shares at a US$900 million discount, payments spread over 10 years.

Over five decades, Okada turned a passion for tinkering with vacuum tubes into a gaming machine powerhouse, omnipresent in Japan’s massive pachinko market and on casino floors globally. Fate took a hand in 2000 when he met Wynn, ironically, just ousted from a company he founded, Mirage Resorts.