Las Vegas Sands Chairman Sheldon Adleson has made it one of his key goals to get lawmakers to restore the Federal Wire Act which will effectively ban the online gambling industry in the U.S. and take the power out of the state’s hands from legalizing the industry.
The 82 year old billionaire launched the Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling and stated that he would personally finance the campaign to put an end to online gambling in America. His campaign has had a lot of success as so far only Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware have legalized online gambling. Adelson is known to have a lot of political influence especially with the Republican party and a number of senators, including South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, have supported Adelson and fought for the “Restoration of America’s Wire Act” (RAWA) bill restored.
While the campaign has had success in delaying and stopping a number of states from legalizing online gambling, the campaign has not had success in getting the RAWA act restored. Sen. Graham recently made one more attempt to get the bill passed after he had requested for a carefully worded clause to be introduced into the spending bill.
The spending bill is a $56.3 billion bill that supports law enforcement, national security and American scientific innovation. The 141 page bill was introduced by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies and has a specific paragraph that has language similar to RAWA. GamblingCompliance reported that it was Sen. Graham who had specifically requested on how the paragraph should be worded.
The paragraph states, “Internet Gambling.—Since 1961, the Wire Act has prohibited nearly all forms of gambling over interstate wires, including the Internet. However, beginning in 2011, certain States began to permit Internet gambling. The Committee notes that the Wire Act did not change in 2011. The Committee also notes that the Supreme Court of the United States has stated that “criminal laws are for courts, not for the government, to construe.”
Sheldon Adelson recently hired a special lobbyist firm to push for the RAWA act to be restored and Canadian based Amaya Inc (parent company of PokerStars), the biggest online poker website in the world, followed suit and hired a lobbyist firm who would fight for the legalization of the online gambling industry and to keep RAWA for being restored.
