Regulatory Failures of the Corporate Casino Model: A Commentary on Anthony Cabot's Casino Redux

Abstract

The corporatization of the casino industry represents one of gambling regulation’s great success stories. Through comprehensive licensing regimes, background investigations, and corporate ownership laws, regulators successfully displaced direct organized crime control that characterized mid-twentieth century casinos. Yet Anthony Cabot’s Casino Redux: Unveiling the Global Casino Network of Chinese Organized Crime (2025) reveals that this corporate model has generated its own systemic vulnerabilities. Drawing on Cabot’s archival examination of regulatory failures across multiple jurisdictions, this commentary argues that incentive alignment failures, including revenue incentives for executives, government dependency on gaming taxes, and the emergence of operators described by Cabot as ‘too big to fail’, have created conditions for indirect organized crime involvement that may prove as damaging as the direct ownership it replaced. The ‘Macau Model’ and ‘Vancouver Model’ demonstrate how legitimate corporations, through junket relationships and anti-money laundering failures, have become unwitting facilitators of transnational criminal enterprise. Addressing this new form of capture requires regulatory and governance reforms distinct from those that succeeded against the American Mafia.