Jacobs claims he was ordered to break the law
The Nevada Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling demanding the Las Vegas Sands Corp. to turn over documents in the company’s ongoing legal war with Steve Jacobs, former head of the company’s Macau operations until he got the boot in 2010.
Attorneys for the Sands Corp. had contended that turning over the documents without redacting personal information would violate Macau law, reported the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
But Chief Justice Mark Gibbons wrote the prevailing opinion, rejecting the Sands petition seeking to overturn the order issued by Clark County District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez.
“We conclude that the mere existence of an applicable foreign international privacy statute does not itself preclude Nevada district courts from ordering foreign parties to comply with Nevada discovery rules,” wrote Gibbons.
Jacobs has waged a four-year legal battle with his former employer, claiming his contract was terminated without cause. The Sands Corp. says he was dismissed because he worked on unauthorized deals and committed multiple violations of company policy, according to a court filing.
Jacobs says he was ordered to commit illegal acts during his time with the company. He claimed last year that Adelson demanded that Macau government officials be illegally investigated for information that could be used as leverage against them in business dealings. That led to a probe by the U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission into whether Adelson’s company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Adelson refuted the accusations. “I never asked or authorized Jacobs to conduct a private investigation of or ‘create a dossier’ on Macanese officials,” Adelson said in a declaration in 2013. “We believe unequivocally that Jacobs initiated the investigation on his own for his own purposes.”
