Arizona Assistant Attorney General Roger Banan, subpoenaed to provide background information about several top level meetings of state officials and two rival gaming tribes who oppose the Desert Diamond Casino in the West Valley, told the court he deliberately destroyed meeting notes after briefing his boss.
The Tohono O’odham Nation opened the Desert Diamond Casino in December, but only after years of legal battles with the state government, two rival gaming tribes, the Gila River and Salt River tribes and most of the state’s congressional delegation lined up against them.
In 2015 the tribe sued the State Department of Gaming to certify its slot machines so that it can offer Class III gaming. Currently it only offers Class II.
Defending itself in that trial the state has made the case that the tribe deliberately misled Arizona officials and other tribes in 2002 about its intentions to build a casino in Glendale, near Phoenix. The public was sold on the idea that casino proliferation would be limited, and this in part led to the constitutional amendment that allowed Las Vegas style Indian gaming in the state, the state maintains.
However, it has run into an embarrassment: Banan’s destruction of notes of the secret meetings.
The tribe purchased the Glendale property with settlement money after a federal dam project inundated thousands of acres of its reservation.
Because there is evidence that the tribe planned to buy land in Glendale at the same time it promised to abide by negotiations of the combined gaming tribes that no more casinos would be built near Phoenix, the state maintains the Tohonos defrauded the public.
In the current court case before a federal judge depositions show that the governor’s office, the Attorney General’s office and the Department of Gaming, and the two rival tribes all sent representatives to a secret meeting. Banan, representing the Gaming Department, kept less than a half of page of notes, which he used to update Department of Gaming Director Daniel Bergin about the meeting—then destroyed the notes.
Banan testified about the meetings, where participants presented ideas on how to keep the casino from opening. Tohono attorneys asked for the notes to determine if Bergin was influenced by the rival tribes into opposing the casino.
Last month U.S. District Judge David Campbell called it “troubling” that the state Department of Gaming had colluded with tribes to “thwart expansion of another.”
After the meeting Bergin sent letters to gaming supply vendors threatening to make it impossible for them to do business in the state if they continued to provide equipment to the Tohonos.
The judge has the ability to block the state from making its fraud counterclaim if he feels the state didn’t act fairly towards the tribe.
During an August 23 deposition Banan said he didn’t consider it necessary to keep the notes of the meetings since they were supposed to be secret anyway.
The tribe has filed a document with the judge asserting that the fact Banan destroyed the notes proves the judge’s suspicions. The tribe’s attorney wrote: “Banan’s destruction of his notes was all the more egregious because they were public records protected by the Arizona Public Records Law,” said the filing. “As such, Banan knew, or certainly should have known, he had a legal obligation to preserve them.”
