The police could not get the Mafia out of Las Vegas so it was left to Wall Street financiers to clean up the desert gambling resort and turn it into one of the great United States success stories.
Property prices are taking off, the population grows incessantly but once it was notorious as a gang bastion with the streets ruled by such characters as ‘Bugsy’ Siegel, who moved across the desert from Los Angeles in 1941.
Las Vegas was once the only place where gambling was legal. The industry took off during the austerity of World War II.
”The first casinos were owned and operated by one-time illegal casino owners from elsewhere who have come here to be able to operate legally, to have respectability in the community,” said historian Michael Green, a University of Nevada professor.
Organised crime bosses played a major role in the financing of hotels, helping speed up the city’s development in the 1950s, said Las Vegas historian Eugene Moehring.
No-one else would invest in ”Sin City,” as banks refused to loan money to casinos or invest in them.
Green said the only source of finance was pension funds for the Teamsters union ”which was clearly connected to the mob”.
The union was headed by Jimmy Hoffa, who disappeared in 1975 and is widely believed to have been killed by organised crime.
The 1967 arrival of madcap billionaire Howard Hughes ushered in a new era, although the Mafia’s downfall came with the passage of a new law in the same year.
Before the law, amended in 1969, each individual casino investor had to obtain a gambling license, making it impossible to raise capital through the stock market.
With the new law, only principal investors were required to possess a license, opening the flood gates for business tycoons to pay for the construction of the decadent hotels that have transformed ”The Strip”.
The Mafia could not shake off the corporate takeover and was finally driven out of Las Vegas by Wall Street and its billions in the late 1970s.
Organised crime’s decline in Las Vegas was depicted in the film Casino starring Robert De Niro, with the film’s ending showing the destruction of the old hotels to make way for the gambling palaces.
In 1990, casino mogul Steve Wynn opened the Mirage, which is known for its water fountain shaped in a volcano that spits fire.
The rival Circus-Circus group later built the Excalibur, a medieval-themed hotel that looks like a castle.
A wave of mergers marked the next decade, with billionaire Kirk Kerkorian’s MGM-Mirage group swallowing up the Mandalay Resort Group for eight billion dollars in April.
Kerkorian now controls the Mirage, Treasure Island, Bellagio, MGM-Grand, New York-New York, Monte Carlo, Circus Circus, Excalibur, Luxor and Mandalay Bay.
Harrah’s Entertainment group is challenging Kerkorian by offering $9,4-billion for Caesars Entertainment, which includes Caesars Palace, Bally’s, the Paris, the Flamengo and the Rio.
The Mafia has been gunned out of town by the mighty dollar.
”I don’t think there is any evidence of organised crime controlling any casino here today,” Green said.
”Not because there is no desire, but corporate money is so much greater than anything.” – Sapa-AFP