When she was kicked off the Wynn Resorts board last year, Elaine Wynn wasn’t happy. She had signed a deal with her former husband, Steve Wynn, to vote her shares in the company along with his wishes. She also cannot sell her 0 million of equity in the company without Steve Wynn’s permission. Steve Wynn wasn’t going to change those stipulations, so Elaine asked a Nevada judge to grant her “whistleblower” status because she allegedly has information about violations of securities laws and regulations within the company, according to a Bloomberg report.
When the judge refused to grant her that status, she filed an petition with the Nevada Supreme Court. In the petition, she claims she sent a letter to the company’s audit committee and to Ernst & Young, the outside auditor, “raising questions about the conduct of Wynn Resorts and its management that she reasonably believed violated federal securities laws.”
The conflict goes back to 2012 when the Wynn board fired then-Vice Chairman Kazuo Okada, who they said was competing with Wynn Resorts by building a casino in Manila. In addition to kicking him off the board, Okada’s shares were redeemed at a steep discount. A lawsuit by Okada over the removal and stock buyback continues to this day.
While Elaine Wynn supported that effort at the time, she later sought to join forces with Okada but the restrictions on her stock prevented it. She says she wasn’t re-elected to the board last year because of her criticism of Steve Wynn’s management style.
Wynn Resorts, meanwhile, has sought sanctions against Elaine Wynn for allegedly violating a court order that prohibited disclosure of confidential information obtained through pre-trial exchange of information and sworn testimony.
Steve and Elaine Wynn divorced twice, the last one being in 2010. Steve Wynn later married Andrea Hissom in 2011.
