Gaming briefs for Feb. 26, 2004

Thursday, Feb. 26, 2004 | 11:12 a.m.

Resort's loss narrows

The bankrupt Aladdin resort on the Las Vegas Strip reported a $402,122 loss in January in a recent filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

The property reported revenue of $23.7 million, offset by $23.3 million in expenses and $766,140 in bankruptcy-related reorganization costs, which include attorney, accountant and U.S. Trustee expenses.

The January results improved on December's $4.1 million loss.

Tribal chair denies special treatment for officials

SACRAMENTO -- Bureau of Indian Affairs officials whose actions helped themselves and their relatives gain membership in a tribe now seeking to build a casino did not receive any special treatment, the tribe's chairman says.

Chairman Matt Franklin defended the Ione Band of Miwok Indians on Wednesday as the FBI began probing alleged conflicts of interest involving the regional bureau officials, who opened the tribe's membership to add 465 people, all of them unrelated to the original 70 members. On Tuesday, the Interior Department's inspector general and Congress' General Accounting Office said they were launching investigations.

"All 535 members of our tribe went through the same recognition and enrollment process as any other. No member, whether or not they worked for the BIA, was given any preferential treatment," Franklin said in a letter to The Washington Post in response to an Associated Press story published there and elsewhere Monday.

The AP article did not allege the tribe gave bureau officials special treatment, but pointed out that the officials' decision to expand the Ione Band's rolls -- over the objections of the tribe's leadership at the time -- allowed the officials to become tribal members and some of their relatives to become tribal leaders.