The Cuomo administration’s process in awarding a license to a Catskills casino attracted the attention of federal authorities who probed whether government insiders profited from the decision.
Securities and Exchange Commission officials noticed unusual trading activity in shares of Empire Resorts Inc., in the days before it was selected for a lucrative casino license on Dec. 17, 2014, a source told The Post.
The state’s Gaming Facility Location Board chose Empire’s $1.3 billion Montreign Casino project near Monticello as one of three gambling meccas to be built across the state. A fourth casino site was selected later.
The siting board’s five members were chosen by the state Gaming Commission. Gov. Cuomo appoints five of the commission’s seven members, including its chairman.
The rapid rise in trading volume and price of Empire stock in the days before and the day of the announcement piqued the interest of SEC agents, said an Albany insider close to the Cuomo administration.
“The SEC was investigating it within two days of what had occurred,” the source said. “It got them very suspicious.”
The volume of traded shares nearly tripled from 31,132 shares bought and sold on Dec. 12, to the 82,495 shares traded on Dec. 16, according to NASDAQ records. The stock price climbed during this period from $32 per share to $40.
On Dec. 17, the day the state panel announced the three winners in the early afternoon, the trading volume of Empire’s shares skyrocketed to 443,883 while its stock price fell below $36 per share, Nasdaq records say.
Empire — whose largest stakeholder, K.T. Lim, is chairman of Malaysian-based global casino conglomerate Genting — was the only publicly traded company among the firms selected by the state.
The stock price and trading volume of five other publicly traded companies among the 16 bidders for the casino licenses remained relatively flat in the days before the announcement.
“This type of unusual activity in the stock’s trading pattern can indicate possible insider trading occurred,” said securities attorney and former SEC assistant regional director Robert Heim.
The FBI in 2015 also began examining how the state panel chose the casino proposals and who may have benefited, a casino industry source told The Post.
“He [the FBI agent] asked about Empire and was looking into whether there was anything in casino procurements,” the casino source said. “The spike in trading at the time came up.”
An Empire Resorts spokesman said they have had no interaction with the SEC or the US Attorney’s Office about the casino-bid process.
US Attorney Preet Bharara’s office and the SEC would not comment.
A Cuomo spokesman said “no one came to visit us and the SEC has not contacted us” and Cuomo attorney Elkan Abramowitz said he is not aware of any investigations involving casinos and has not been asked to provide any casino-related records to law-enforcement authorities.
State Gaming Commission spokesman Lee Park said the bid process “has been conducted with 100 percent transparency and the utmost integrity.”
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