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The chair of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) fledgling gambling regulator, gambling industry veteran Jim Murren, has been accused in a US media outlet of a conflict of interest after taking up the chairmanship of Resorts World Las Vegas.
Resorts World Las Vegas on December 5 announced the formation of a board of directors with former MGM Resorts International chairman and CEO Jim Murren at the helm.
“With over 40 years of collective experience in the global gaming and hospitality industry, we are confident that [newly appointed CEO Alex Dixon] and Jim, alongside the Board, will help drive the Company forward in pursuing our strategic goals for years to come,” Genting Berhad chairman and CEO Kok Thay Lim said in a statement.
The statement acknowledged Murren’s tandem role as the first chair of the UAE’s General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority (GCGRA). Murren took up the GCGRA chairmanship upon the creation of the regulator in September 2023.
On Monday (December 16), the non-profit States Newsroom affiliate Nevada Current quoted a Las Vegas Advisor gambling columnist and a former gambling executive and regulator as saying that Murren’s appointment clearly confuses private and public responsibilities.
“It is ludicrous to believe that a person can regulate firms in one jurisdiction and compete with them in another,” said Richard Schuetz, a consultant and former California Gambling Control Commission member, former executive director of the Bermuda Casino Gaming Commission and former executive with Grand Casinos and Las Vegas Sands.
“In the UAE, he is the head of the regulatory agency that can make material decisions that impact Wynn [Resorts], MGM, and others. As chair of Resorts World, he is competing with these entities in Vegas. That is a clear conflict.”
Schuetz criticised Murren for publicly downplaying last month the chances of the GCGRA considering a casino licence application by his former company, MGM, even as he was likely negotiating terms with Resorts World, MGM’s “clear competitor”.
This “seems very problematic to me”, he said. “I would be furious if I were an MGM shareholder.”
Nevada Current also quoted Las Vegas Advisor gambling industry columnist David McKee as saying that the dual roles are “a pretty obvious conflict of interest".
“Shareholders of MGM and Resorts World could be affected by Murren’s decision-making.
“So could shareholders of Wynn Resorts — anybody who’s got a financial interest in getting into the Emirates has got to be paying attention to Murren sitting on the regulatory board for the Emirates, and also now heading up Resorts World,” he said.
McKee said the UAE government was always likely to treat Wynn’s future integrated resort on Al Marjan Island in the emirate of Ras Al Khaimah as a priority and not “promptly” act on rival applications.
“But that still doesn’t remove the ethical onus on Murren not to be serving both as a regulator and as an executive for an interested party,” he said.
Complicating Murren’s appointment are regulatory actions against Resorts World Las Vegas by the Nevada Gaming Control Board, as well as federal investigator interest in Scott Sibella, a former MGM executive under Murren whose plea agreement with the feds in January over a failed anti-money laundering notification dragged in Sibella’s record at Resorts World as a matter of interest.
“This really is not rocket science,” Schuetz told Nevada Current on Murren’s private and public roles.
“It would be like [Gaming Control Board] chairman Kirk Hendrick being appointed as chair of a casino company in New York, and wanting to stay as chair of the [control board], understanding that many firms in Nevada want to be in New York.”
The GCGRA did not respond at publication time to Vixio GamblingCompliance questions on whether the GCGRA board approved Murren’s Resorts World appointment and whether the UAE federal government was notified in advance.
Murren’s potential or actual conflict of interest is the first public misstep for the GCGRA after just over a year of developing the UAE’s regulatory structure and issuing licences to Wynn, gambling industry suppliers and a lottery monopoly.
The regulator’s profile has otherwise been low key, preferring a tight-knit operation with little public engagement and still less media outreach. Its most recent public statement was a consumer advisory on December 9 that warned UAE residents against engaging with “unlicensed lottery and commercial gaming operators”.
However, GCGRA chief executive officer Kevin Mullally, a former Gaming Laboratories International general counsel and director of Missouri’s gambling regulator, spoke at this year’s AGM of the International Association of Gaming Regulators in Rome and was appointed as a trustee representing the Asia-Oceania region.
