Jack Binion’s ties, reputation questioned by Illinois regulators, but casino sale OK’d

Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2000 | 11:15 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

CHICAGO -- Illinois regulators approved the sale of a casino to a company run by Las Vegas gambling figure Jack Binion even though investigators said questions about Binion's background should disqualify him from casino ownership, the Chicago Tribune reported today.

Binion is the brother of murdered casino executive Ted Binion and of Becky Behnen, current owner of the legendary Horseshoe Club in downtown Las Vegas that was founded by their father Benny in 1951. Benny Binion died in 1989, his wife Teddy Jane died in 1984.

Investigators for the Illinois Gaming Board reported in November that Jack Binion's record was so full of questionable practices and associations that he should be barred from the casino business in Illinois.

Shortly afterward, on Nov. 30, the Gaming Board approved a $609 million deal for Binion's Horseshoe Gaming to buy Empress Entertainment Inc., owner of riverboat casinos in Joliet, Ill., and Hammond, Ind.

The staff report said Binion, the chairman and CEO of Horseshoe, left "a trail of poor business practices, regulatory violations and financial malpractice."

Binion's attorney, Anton Valukas, said the report is full of inaccuracies and misinterpretations.

"Some of these charges are frankly scurrilous," he said.

The report said Binion put up $2 million in 1993 to bail out of jail a high-stakes gambler, Kamel Nacif, who the Nevada Gaming Control Board said was associated with narcotics and firearms sales and money laundering.

The report cited another incident in which the New York State Organized Crime Task Force investigated gambler Jack Franzi and had Nevada officials freeze his cash account at Binion's Horseshoe in 1995.

But the day the account was frozen, Franzi walked into the casino and took $55,000 from the frozen account after Jack Binion "expressly authorized" the withdrawal, the Illinois report said.

Binion later told authorities he thought the request to freeze the accounts was a prank, the Illinois report said.

It said that in Louisiana, Binion offered "highly irregular" partnerships to four people who were not investors in his casino ventures and appeared to od little actual work other than to offer ties to politicians and "local influence," the report said.

"When pursuing his personal interests or those of his friends, Mr. Binion appears to view such laws ... as obstacles to circumvent rather than standards he is obliged to follow," the Illinois staff report said. "The result has been a trail of poor business practices, regulatory violations and financial malpractice."