Vancouver officials are investigating the recent hiring of former B.C. Lottery Corp. CEO Michael Graydon as president of PV Hospitality. The latter company is a partnership between Paragon Gaming and 360 Vox Corp. Paragon is planning to develop a new casino on the city’s waterfront.
Finance Minister Mike de Jong told ministry officials the probe would assess whether Graydon’s move constitutes a conflict of interest.
Graydon recently quit BCLC after six years as head of the corporation. At PV Hospitality, he will oversee the proposed new $535 million Edgewater casino complex beside BC Place. The resort is across the street from Edgewater’s current site, and doubles the amount of gaming space even though the company is barred by the province from adding new slot machines or tables.
Graydon told the Vancouver Sun that the investigation “gives me an opportunity to finally have this issue cleared up and resolved. I’m very confident that there is absolutely no conflict of interest, and this will hopefully put some of the public rhetoric that’s been flowing around to rest.”
The internal audit will review Graydon’s “involvement and interaction” with Paragon and its affiliates before his resignation, according to a letter sent from de Jong to BCLC Chair Bud Smith.
Graydon told the Sun that he talked with Paragon for less than a month before taking the job. He said he made no rulings on the new casino during that time.
“There’s no secret information, shall we say, that is something that I was holding onto that would be advantageous to” the proposed casino project, he said. He defended his decision not to inform BCLC while he was considering the offer. “I informed them as soon as I had come to a conclusion that I was going to accept the job,” he said. “It really does have a significant impact on your relationship should you decide not to take the job.”
New Democratic Party member Shane Simpson, who opposes gaming, told said the probe was a “good step. … The air has to be cleared here.”
“Obviously Mr. Graydon is intimately aware of all of the activities and the plans of the lottery corporation today and moving forward,” Simpson said. “For one company to potentially have that knowledge where others didn’t is a problem.”
According to Simpson, BCLC’s Standards of Ethical Business Conduct say “an apparent conflict of interest exists when there is a reasonable apprehension, which reasonable well-informed persons could properly have, that a conflict of interest exists.”
“It’s not reasonable to expect what Mr. Graydon knows today about the lottery corporation he will forget overnight. A year from now, it will be a different circumstance. That’s why there is a cooling-off period,” Simpson said.
Graydon said the by-laws did not constrain him from considering the offer or taking the position.
“I would not have taken that job if I believed there was a conflict of interest,” he said.
