Legalizing Gambling in the Bahamas

by Craig Butler

Sometime ago Peter Tosh wrote a song entitled ‘Legalize It’, referring to the use of marijuana. Presumably he was speaking about Jamaica but his thrust could have been for a wider audience.

I spent two years in Jamaica and the number of people (professional and otherwise) who smoked ganja was unbelievable. I’m not trying to pick on Jamaicans or seeking to add insult to injury - I am merely drawing an analogy.

Jamaica has refused to legalize marijuana, and probably for good reason. But on a visit you would be forgiven for believing that marijuana was legal because of how freely it is smoked.

In the Bahamas we have the same problem and I’m not speaking about marijuana, although we have developed the same nonchalant attitude towards rolling up a joint and taking a hit. That is a story for another day.

What I speak about is our illegal gaming houses, and the remarks made by Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham in Parliament recently.

Those comments appeared to be innocuous, but I do believe it was a planned attempt to judge the tide of opinion. I can remember when similar comments were made by Kenyatta Gibson during the last administration and it solicited the same responses.

The Prime Minister stated ‘Now Mr. Speaker this society on a Sunday morning, you go to the gaming houses, to Flowers and those places, and it is like a bank on a payday – government payday. They are set up like a bank, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of places. Well either we believe that it is illegal, or we believe that it should be legal. I told the Commissioner of Police last week, that it seems to me that we are unable to enforce the law, and that I was going to give consideration to legalizing the number business. Of course he didn’t support me in that thinking but the reality is that it is not an enforceable law…’

Even if we pass legislation to make gambling legal, what are we going to do about all the illegal operations that presently exist? I say this because if we are truly going to reap the benefits of a gaming system we will need to institute centralized control.

Let’s face it, the gentlemen who own and operate these establishments are not going to disappear into that good night because the government decides it wants in. This is a lucrative business and a man just does not give up money that easily. There are also many others who benefit from this activity. If you disbelieve me, pull up to any number house around lunchtime and you will see quite a few police cars there as well.

Word is that the police assist in the transporting of the money, or come for their payoffs. Additionally how many of the same pastors that preach about the wrongs of gambling indulge themselves or accept the bounty handed over to them by these gentlemen?

The Christian Council has said it is opposed to the legalization of gambling. Bishop Humes was quick to issue a statement and I guess I can understand why. But what I find incredulous is that as long as we make no attempt to bring order to a situation, we all appear to be happy with allowing it to continue by turning a blind eye.

Bahamians love to gamble, and some do so to their own detriment. But the legalization of this habit will not lead to an exponential rise in the number of gamblers. It will, however, allow government to fund programmes that can have a positive impact on our youth, such as community centres, sports and education facilities.

So what is it that really frightens the Christian Council? Is it that they feel as though there will be less money in the collection plates or are they really concerned with the degradation of our society? Sometimes I honestly have to wonder.

This is why the prime minister can’t afford to take the temperature of the population. He must make a decision and act. If gambling is to remain illegal then he must cause all the weight of the police to come down on these individuals, along with the ensuing prosecutions, until it is driven from our land.

If gambling is to be legalized then he must cause the infrastructure to be put in place that will avoid the inevitable attempts at tampering and manipulation by ingenious persons. Gambling should be controlled on behalf of the state by an independent company that is subject to public audits and oversight.

The problem is that whatever option is chosen, a significant part of the political base would be affected whether adversely or not. It is well known that the numbers men have funded political parties for a long time. Equally the political parties count on the churches to garner the base of their support.

Accordingly, without hurting anyone, we have had a secret pact for years that allows the numbers men to ply their trade and the Christian Council to save face.

It is this very same compromise that is part of the root problem that we have in our society today. On the one hand we want our youth and miscreants to obey the rule of law and on the other we can’t seem to do without the euphoric pleasure it brings.

This is an issue that requires self-examination. We live in an ever-changing world and there are many things that we don’t like and we ourselves won’t indulge in. In deference to the Christian principles of our nation we have deemed many of these activities to be immoral and/or illegal. Yet with increasing frequency, clubs or spots are popping up to tend to the desires of a large segment of the population that desire the same.

So if it isn’t smoking marijuana, gambling or the sex trade, it will be something else. I just hope that as a nation we can find a way to peaceably co-exist because the illicit pleasures are generating far too much money for those concerned and as a result they prefer to risk getting caught than to give it up.

Comments

[drew Roberts]

"co-exist because the illicit pleasures are generating far too much money for those concerned and as a result they prefer to risk getting caught than to give it up."

Surely sometimes and in some places, it is the very people making money from the illegality of things that want them to stay illegal...

all the best,

drew

[Tim Roberts]

'I told the Commissioner of Police last week, that it seems to me that we are unable to enforce the law, and that I was going to give consideration to legalizing the number business. Of course he didn’t support me in that thinking but the reality is that it is not an enforceable law…’

This is, in my opinion, a BIG part of the reason nothing is going to change regarding crime. What a terrible sentiment to come from the Leader of our country.

'Not an enforceable law'?

It is, by all accounts a law that is not enforced. But how many other laws that are not enforced can be deemed 'not enforceable'? And beyond that, do we negate laws just because we find it too difficult to enforce?

Last year a new record high in murders was set, and this year the trend continues. Doesn't seem we are able to enforce that law about not killing people, so maybe we should legalize it?? (I know...extreme example)

But where do we draw the line. And the more serious questions are Why? Why can't that law be enforceable? Is it because of corruption within the police ranks? Or are our Police not equipped with the ability to find and shut down these operations?

If we make the fines extreme enough, if the operators of numbers houses were AFRAID of the penalty because it was 1. harsh enough and 2. enforced, then possibly there would be less.

I am a realist, and I do know it would be impossible to completely wipe out the numbers business, but it could be severely limited.

This is how it is in general throughout the Bahamas today though. There is too little respect for the rule of law or the authority assigned to carry it out. Until the Police force is revamped, and laws (ALL of them) are enforced we will continue to have these problems.

I also say shame on the PM for saying the a law is 'not enforceable', and therefore should be legalized. Thats a very poor message to come from the leader of the country.

[drew Roberts]

Tim:

"But where do we draw the line."

A couple of initial thoughts...

This is a democracy. Should we make things illegal that a majority of the people do? If so, under what circumstances?

We should get all laws that we are not going to enforce regularly and fairly and seriously OFF THE BOOKS. Don't just not enforce them. THIS LEADS to DISREGARD OF THE LAW.

(Not yelling at you per se.)

Your initial thoughts?

all the best,

drew

[Tim Roberts]

Drew:

I understand where you are coming from, and I don't necessarily disagree.

If the MAJORITY of Bahamians were drug dealers for instance, I do not agree that it should be legalized. However, in the case of people gambling 'playing numbers', I would agree with you. However, gambling is big business and creates its own problems whether legal or not. Gambling of any sort needs to still be regulated.

I am sure if we look in the law books there a MANY laws which are not enforced, many of which OUGHT to be, which out of laziness, ignorance or indifference aren't. I don't suggest the removal of those at all.

The laws do need to be re-examined from time to time to ensure that they are valid or fair, that they are properly enforced and competent officers of the law ought to have certain input as to the practical sides of how the law is enforced, and how it is effective or ineffective.

To remove laws JUST BECAUSE the majority of people do it is not necessarily good. To what extent can we let democracy dictate what is right or wrong? There are some instances where it is fair to do so, and others where it can cause extreme imbalance in society. The governments job is to protect that balance. Always pray for benevolent government and leadership.

However, I will say too, which was not apparent in my first response, that it is not so much that there is consideration of legalizing 'numbers' houses, but more of the seemingly nonchalant way the PM addressed the issue, and the poor reasoning. Even if he didn't have a better reason, make up one...I feel it makes the Bahamas look bad (stupid in more direct terms) to say we CANT enforce it.

thats my 2 cents anyhow.

[poormanscrusader]

Drew and Tim,
You have both made some excellent points. I think the PM is reluctant to open up that particular 'can of worms', as it would no doubt have consequences for our financial sector.
I am currently going through (4 years post cancer and subsequent financial devastation) some unpleasantness with a major bank here.
I "unloaded" on the CEO by email during a fit of desperation, and brought up all the unmentionable subjects you have referred to. This "venting" was a waste of time as 10 days later there was still no response.
It seems my email was subsequently forwarded to others within the bank,(without my consent) who decided to close ranks, and the whole thing turned quite nasty.
I had gone to meet with one of their managers at their Loan Collection Centre to discuss my husband's mortgage and was treated like a reprobate. I must have touched a few nerves with some comments in the email, and was (pardon the expression) promptly given the "bum's rush" upon my arrival. I had no ride home and no cellular phone, and borrowed an employee's cell phone to leave a message for my spouse.
Two and a half hours later, seated in the foyer (manager was still busy it seems) I had taken to chatting about the weather and politics in the US with a couple of patrons, when the elderly doorman who had popped into the back a couple of times, informed me to stop talking or he would put me out! I told him to please call the police as they may be kind enough to give me a ride home. (The bank had decided to waste my time it seems and I am a friendly person who was merely relieving boredom.)
I am a lady nearing 54 years of age and have gone though much with my family these past few years. I was so humiliated at such shabby treatment after 3 decades in this country, I became tearful and finally left. I caught a jitney and walked home in stiletto heels. (I had arrived at midday and it was too hot to wait outdoors.)
Oddly enough the doorman had been unavailable to let me out, and upon realizing his faux pas, muttered to me that he would lose his job if he didn't do as he was told.
Whatever happened to democracy, or civil rights? What were they so afraid I may say to others while waiting?
Big mistake on their part to treat me like the "village idiot" and they should be taught a lesson.
In the UK I am told they have a Discrimination and Disability Act which protects the rights of those like myself. (Cancer patients are included.)
Now it seems their CEO has finally responded, since I have told them I may go to the media with my story. I received an apology which is nothing short of a miracle since the only "m" word banks are concerned with is MONEY, not morals it seems.
My husband and I have been searching for work but due to our advancing years, must struggle with age discrimination.
I can scarcely find employment as a housekeeper for a decent wage, and while out in my garden the other day watched a smiling young hispanic lady (likely Filipino) pass by on her way home from work.
I was a civil sevant before I moved here, and had called the department of public service a few months ago, hoping there may be a position available. The lady I spoke with seemed to think it would be better for me to "return home" if I can't find work, like the American lady she knew (younger than myself) who apparently had to return home. She seemed to find it all quite amusing, but is likely one of those persons who had the "right connections" and believes she will never lose her position, short of commiting a serious felony!
She also told me a rather interesting tidbit, that Bishop Neil Ellis had 2 persons of Filipino descent "brought in", as domestics for his mansion overlooking the lake. However,you may wish to confirm this for yourself.
I must therefore deduce that the 3 children I produced with my Bahamian spouce, and the 30 years of time (and money) invested here were for naught. Not to mention 11 years waiting for Permanent Resident status with the right to gainful occupation, while the PLP were the ruling party.
Seems that same party gave Anna Nicole Smith residency within a mere 3 weeks!
I have no blemish on my record and my family are all decent law abiding persons.
Perhaps government and the establishement, wish all the honest hardworking folk, would "leave" the country so those with ulterior motives may prosper. Sorry, I am not another D'Arcy Ryan - you are stuck with me!
This brings me back to the point.
I am fighting to keep the roof over my head, while Mr.Flowers is enjoying life in his multi-million dollar mansion on P.I.
Will someone please tell me exactly what he has contributed to this country so far? He certainly (from "the Nassau grapevine" sipsip) doesn't appear to have a wholesome past by all accounts.
I have concluded that most of us are intimidated by such individuals, and that's what it all boils down to in the end.
A nation in turmoil because the less fortunate will not stand up and say "ENOUGH" for fear of recrimination from persons weilding power, or those who may resort to ANY means to silence us.
There's no "witness protection" around these parts, and no one in government seems to care either. Wonder why?
He may be the corrupt politician, police officer, numbers man or drug dealer, but if as a people those "laid back" (always so endearing to me as a visitor)Bahamians, would come together and protest, some day our Bahamaland will be a beautiful paradise once more.
PEACE.

[Mark Johnson]

Hi guys,

Great comments by all. I think that serious thought should be taken when taking considerations on whether or not legalizing gambling in the Bahamas, would be beneficial to us or not. We know tourists are allowed to gamble in the casinos, and, while that may be set as an issue of discrimination against Bahamians. However, tourists coming and gambling on a one time whim in a hotel casino- set against- the continual gambling vices, being made available to all Bahamians over the top and sanctioned by the state, means something totally different.

My Christian values play little significance to it all- although, it is an added incentive for me to say no to gambling being made whole-sale legal in the Bahamas.

The key sticking points for me are- social degradation and, this wringing of the hands by the PM, and him saying in essence; "I can't enforce the law and, I can't get the police to enforce the law, so, I am legalizing crime". THAT, is NOT the approach we need to crime in total. To boot, the values we lose, as opposed to the few bucks, if that, which we envision to be gained from TRYING to tax numbers houses, seems to be not well thought out. Why would numbers houses, pay a HEAVY tax? A HEAVY tax, is what would be needed to put a dent in any social program we have and to make it worth regulating and, worth the economic value for the Bahamas. What do they expect? For the numbers men, to up and pay a tax, when they have been getting away with it for free? Do you think that the numbers men and women would all sign up to pay a tax of 250k and over for them to operate with any form of government controls? If they did, would they stay in “legal” business?

What you would do, if you try to impose any HEAVY tax, it not only has to be small for illegal numbers men to bite, but, you would have opened the door, for these numbers men and women, to have a legitimate stake in doing their illegality without fear of any true follow up on their illegal networks and who they truly work for. That’s where true social degradation comes into serious consideration. This is the Bahamas and not, the UK or the USA. Just because they did it, does not mean that we should and that they are reaping heavy rewards, from it- they just make it appear to be “ok”…that’s all. Indian gaming has been under intense scrutiny. The UK casinos are empty- on many occasions. And, their economic viability, are suspect- the UK, has one of thee highest tax burden in the civilized world. Gambling does not make a dent to their public treasury.

Regardless of how many people are doing it. People use drugs as well and, violent crime is on the rise in addition with it- will you legalize those as well?

Now, back to the social decay aspect. Everyone with an ounce of experience, knows that gambling, especially illegal gambling and for that matter, casinos, which are near impossible to regulate fairness of return due to their nature of chance, has with it certain bi-products that come with it- money laundering, prostitutes, drugs, gang violence and mafia wars, public corruption and allot of other factors, which lead to more social decay. Nevada, in particular, has legalized prostitution and gambling whole sale. That does NOT mean, that if their crime and corruption statistics declined, that in fact corruption and social decadence is not prevalent. We are supposed to protect the public interest- in more particular reference- protect the public savings. Gambling does the exact opposite.

There are allot of things to think about, before the powers that be, turn this Commonwealth into something we can't control- for them to up and tell us ten years after hell breaks loose, that we could not handle the progress.

The leadership needs to take some careful thought into the matter. This is of course, if the PM, does NOT have in mind to make foreigners the first preference when legalizing gambling and, defeating the purpose of rooting out illegal gambling in the inner city.

All Flowers and Bowe has to do is just promise $100 more in the three-ball, and, the guys who the PM invited from wherever to make legalized gambling work, will be null and void and lose market share, to the same illegal gambling houses in the Bahamas. Then, the PM has to start back from the top, all over again, by enforcing the law in the inner city, to which he was supposed to be doing anyway. If the foreigners he lets in the legalize gambling for Bahamians, don’t take the matter into their own hands.

These people don’t know what they could start in this country with this thing.

[drew Roberts]

To Mark Johnson.

And to everyone else really...

I did not say that we should make gambling legal in my post.

I did say that we should seriously, end fairly enforce any law we have on the books or take that law off of the books. Anything less leads to disrespect of the law and that social degradation of which you speak.

The question I asked about if we should have a law that makes the majority of our citizens criminals when we are a democracy is a serious one. And I think the answer may be more subtle that one might think I believe on first reading that question.

So, should we have such laws? And if so, what guiding principals should determine which to have and which not to have.

Answering that may help us to decide which laws currently on the books to remove and which to get serious about enforcing.

all the best,

drew

Wild Idea - Opt In Income Tax For The Bahamas
http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2008/02/wild-idea-opt-in-income-tax-for-bahamas.html

[critical thinker]

Well my views on legalizing gambling, when you think about it gambling is legal in the Bahamas but only in hotels, and not legal to Bahamians.I also believe that these casinos are responsible for y some sort of tax to the government( not too sure on the taxation method). So if we are so morally upright as a country on the whole why arent we opposed to people coming into our country to gamble as well. Also i believe that because of the widely acceptance and currently level of gambling in number houses it would not increase the numbers of persons that gamble because all people that want to gamble currently do gamble through buying numbers on a regular basis. Also,through observation realize that the majority of people that do gamble are those on the lower socioeconomic scales. So the money used from be proceeds of gambling in number houses can be taxed to facilitate the needs of those who cry that they are unable to provide themselves with healthcare, welfare assistance and a better level of education for their children. This disposible income used to gamble, since it is not being used for saving and investment can be used for something constructive through taxation to benefit these very people as i mentioned above. Also, we can observe the number of countries in our region that have benefited from a national lottery. At the same time we should examine the cons, however i feel as though the pros will outweight the cons. As for all the other illegal activites gambling, cannot be classified on the same level as prostitution and drug selling /abuse such as these are activities that can cause bodily/physical harm and compromise the safety of these individuals who partake in such activities.

I welcome all comments

[jenea major]

I think that thy should make this legalised.Even if the governmtent does not legalise number buying Bahamians still would find a way to do. This is an addiction to some people, that is waht people donot understand, so the law enforcers might as well make this a legalised action.

[jimmy]

However gamblling is taking money from one to another. Government have to check the liscense of gambllers.If majority of people in Bahamas were not bothered then it can be made legalised.

-----------------------------
jimmy

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[John Doe]

So do all of you believe that a simple solution to this is to have a referendum to ammend the Lottery and Gaming Act with the decision made by Bahamians based on the results from the following two questions related to this topic:

a) All Human Beings over the age of 18 are allowed to Gamble anywhere in the Bahamas regardless of RACE, INCOME, GENDER, NATIONALITY without fear of DISCRIMINATION.

b) No Human Beings are allowed to Gamble anywhere in the Bahamas.

To break it down for those who are unsure, EITHER a) ALL HUMAN BEINGS ARE ALLOWED TO GAMBLE IN THE BAHAMAS, OR b) NO HUMAN BEINGS ARE ALLOWED TO GAMBLE IN THE BAHAMAS?

I would simply like to address something that most seem to be avoiding which is a billion times far worse than Gambling and its called DISCRIMINATION. I dont gamble and never intend to but I feel that discrimination is far worse and point blank, all forms of Gambling in my opinion (WHETHER IT BE NUMBERS, RAFFLE TICKETS, THROWING QUARTERS IN DA GLASS AT DA CARNIVAL, DRAWINGS/SWEEPSTAKES AT GAS STATIONS FURNITURE STORES OR GAS STATIONS FOR A PRIZE, CASINOS OR ANY OTHER FORM OF GAMBLING SHOULD BE BANNED IN THE BAHAMAS.

To all of you who seem to not understand the point that the PM made in regards to Gambling (Numbers) being an unenforceable law is the fact that common sense would allow anyone to see that Flowers, Bowe and the rest of them have all read the Lottery and Gaming Act and their is no provision making it "ILLEGAL FOR BAHAMIANS TO PARTICIPATE IN INTERNET GAMING" along with the fact that Cable Bahamas or BTC allow us to access these U.S. based Internet Gaming Websites and there is no way that a Democratic Govt can ban the internet or ban certain website but allow others because thats what countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea do.

I will also say to all persons who profess to be Christians that it what be hypocritical to say that Bahamians should not be allowed to gamble if you are infact working at any company/business which infact facilitates it e.g. the Gaming Board, Crystal Palace, Four Seasons, Atlantis, Bimini Bay or any other Gaming resort in the Bahamas, why, because you should infact be protesting in the front of these very companies who are destroying the Families of the Tourists who gamble all of their monies here in our Casinos so that when they go home broke and unable to support their Families since many use that as an excuse against Bahamians out of convenience.

I am tired of people who are brainwashed into believing that the results of the amount of men losing all of their monies at the Hobby Hall Race track is the sole reason why Bahamians are not allowed to Gamble in the Bahamas because that a bunch of rubbish.

The fact is that its all about racism or a thinking that BLACK Bahamians are uncivilized animals who cannot control themselves around the tourists if they are allowed to play in the same Casino as them along with the fact that Bahamians will cut deals with the Dealers in the Casino to cheat (WHICH ALSO OCCURS EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD), and with the obvious fact that Bahamians are 95% Black, the remaining 5% that are not Black who are used as a sacrifice for people to say that white Bahamians cannot gamble also is a poor excuse because one cannot compare 5% of the population with 95% of the population as it is unfair to both.

I personally feel that until we have mass demonstrations as a people againts liquor stores, casinos, numbers houses, night/strip clubs, cigarettes/backwood and all of these other VICES that are continuing the destruction of our society, we are only wasting our time complaining, or and more importantly, protesting against the govt for overtaxing us poor people with ridiculous $1.77 out of every gallon of gas along with getting rid of the Privy Council who could care lees about the fact that my child was raped and killed in the front of me in which I saw the beast with my own eyes but yet he has more rights than my child in which a decision is made by a bunch of people who dont live here to give the beast more rights than me and my family and not hanging him overturning the useless Supreme Court whos decisions are always overturned by these foreign judges who dont live here, oh yes the govt can get rid of the Privy Council if we as a people force them to implement a court of Bahamians only as the highest court of our land.

[John Doe]

Hello again all, in light of recent discussions pertaining to Gambling, I also decided to post this information for all of you and I can guarantee that once you are done reading this, you will understand why I will make the statement that our fate was sealed long before I was born as I am in my 20's with the following statement below:

The main reason the Bahamas is the way it is today as Gambling along with Prostitution/Money Laundering/Compromisation/Conflict of Interest/Hypocricy and all of the other Vices you can possibly think of is indicated in the text below. I must say to all of you that before you read this, please do so when you have some free time because it should take about 10 to 15 minutes to complete. Bottom line is, Stafford Sands may have closed the door to Gambling to Bahamians for his own motives but unfortunately he opened the doors to Foreigners to Evil in this Country which is facilitated by us to this day (Atlantis/Crystal Palace/Four Seasons/Bimini Bay Resort & Casino/The Gaming Board/The Casino Credit Union/Fantasy/Flowers/Bowe/Red Hot and worst of all, the fact that Mr Lynde* Pindlin* poured Gasoline on the fire rather than putting the fire out has unfortunately resulted in us 40 years later discussing the problems with Gambling we are facing today which has yet to be corrected by Mr. Perr* Christi* or Mr. Huber* Ingraha*. Here Goes.

“In the mid 1960s, the legalization of casino gambling in the Bahamas touched off fears among U.S. authorities that the dreaded Mafia—as personified by Meyer Lansky—might be having a field day in the islands. The excitement began in October 1966 with a Wall Street Journal article revealing conniving and corruption between Wallace Groves' Grand Bahama Development Co. and the old-guard Bahamian leadership starring the redoubtable Sir Stafford Sands and the Bay Street Boys. The following year Life magazine (Feb. 3, 1967) and the Saturday Evening Post (Feb. 25, 1967) joined in the fun. Ed Reid's chapter adds a little about Lou Chesler... Since much of this concerned Grand Bahama, I have included these articles, one from Newsweek (1964) and a part of an article from Queen, (25 Oct.,1967), as historical fodder for the interested reader.

Three centuries ago pirates invaded the Bahamas, and some say they still do. Now a political upset threatens a gambling empire that funnels millions of dollars a year into the hands of American gangsters.

Twice a week a strange little drams is enacted on Grand Bahama Island—a fragment of the British Empire which is described in tourist brochures as a "new horizon, bright with adventure and beauty … a New World Riviera which offers unparallel opportunities to the investor." A man named Dusty Peters rises early on each of those tow mornings, breakfasts in one of Grand Bahama's six luxury hotels, nods politely to the two U.S Government agents watching him intently from a nearby table, shovels a huge cigar into his flabby, middle-aged face, and sets about his chores.

He goes to the island's two gambling casinos, the Monte Carlo and El Casino, where he collects batches of checks and IOUs representing the losings/of the hapless high-rollers of the preceding two or three nights. He cheerfully shoves the checks and "markers" into a briefcase, exchanges Damon Runyonesque badinage with the casino's staid British secretaries, and drives to Grand Bahama's Freeport International Airport. The two U.S. agents always follow at a discrete distance. At the airport Peters and the agents board a plane for Miami, just 70 miles away. When the plane lands in Florida, just 35 minutes later, the agents follow Peters to a Miami Beach bank. Where he deposits the contents of his briefcase, worth possibly $30,000. From the bank Peters goes to the Fontainebleau Hotel and takes the elevator to the mezzanine-floor card room. Awaiting him in the card room is none other than Meyer Lansky, or his brother Jake, or both. Senate racket hearings have established the Lanskys as notorious American hoodlums who have long been associated with the Mafia. The U.S. agents always see at least one Lansky in the room before the door is locked.

The agents cannot force their way into the room because, on the surface at least, there is nothing illegal in what Peters and the Lanskys are doing. They are merely taking gambling money out of the Bahamas. What frustrates the agents is the fact that Meyer Lansky is know by the Justice Department to represent the gambling investments of five "families" of the Mafia in the United States—Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Buffalo. Federal officials firmly believe that in 1966 Lansky funneled at least six million dollars to the five mobs. The only way that Justice can attack this system is by trying to prove that the recipients of the money are not paying taxes on it—a possibility being investigated by federal grand juries in New York and Philadelphia.

All this is irritating enough for the Justice officials, but what is particularly galling is the knowledge that Lansky, a man they have fought for years, is being allowed to operate just 70 miles off the Florida coast. The gambling operation is legal in the Bahamas, a self-governing British colony. Whatever his connection with the American Mafia, Dusty Peters is simply an employee of Bahamas Amusements. Ltd.— which owns the licenses for both casinos on Grand Bahama—and so are the 55 steely-eyed managers, supervisors and "pit bosses" of the operation. After running intelligence checks on the 55, the Justice Department's organized-crime experts discovered that nearly all of them had criminal records in the United States and that nearly all, in one way or another, have been tied in with the Lansky-Mafia apparatus at some time in the past.

For the past three years, Lansky's gambling operation has been completely legal in the Bahamas. It began under the rule of the predominately white United Bahamian Party. The U.B.P. completely controlled the islands' Negroes, who make up 80% of the population. Film star Sidney Poitier, who was raised in the Bahamas and still holds citizenship in the islands, explains to me how the Negroes felt about the U.B.P politicians: "These people were incapable of governing these islands as a colony, only as a huge, personal plantation."

As gambling prospered, the casinos became the symbol of the general corruption in the islands, but the U.B.P. seemed to be so firmly in control that the system appeared to be unassailable. When Negro leaders began to complain about the racketeers who were running the gambling, The U.B.P confidently called an election in January to renew its hold on the islands. Then the impossible happened. The Negroes organized themselves effectively for the first time and threw the U.B.P out of office. The new premier is a Progressive Liberal named Lynden O. Pindling, but he has a bare majority in the Assembly. When he took over on January 16, Pindling faced the ticklish task of maintaining his power and yet moving against the corruption in the casinos and the 700 islands as a whole. Meanwhile, during the confusion and the uncertainty, Dusty Peters continue to fly to Miami carrying his fat briefcase.

To no one who knew the Bahamas well in the past, a disturbing change has come over one of the world's most beautiful groups of island in the sun. During my visits in 1966, I found that the physical attractions were still there—the transparent waters, the magnificent white beaches, the superb weather. On my previous trips to the islands there/ also had been great charm and hospitality among both white and Negro Bahamians. Now all this seemed to be gone, including, symbolically, the flowers which people no longer cared about.

The whites were nervous and withdrawn, the Negroes bitter and hostile. Some of the lesser-known islands, such as Eleuthera and Abaco, still possessed the old charm. Grand Bahama, however, was a vast scar of raw white limestone dust as bulldozers cleared the way for another, more frenetic, Miami Beach. Colorful old Nassau was a chaos of overbooked hotels, and increasing number of cheap souvenir shops, and so many tourists elbowing their way through the milling crowds on the once-picturesque Bay Street that the city was being referred to as the Coney Island of the West Indies.

There was an ominous blight on the islands—a new colonialism in the encroaching presence of the Mafia and its allies. The government of the United Bahamian Party had paid an American public-relations firm, Hill & Knowlton, nearly $5 million a year to play up the virtues of the climate and the sand and the investment opportunities. Hill & Knowlton (which also numbers the feudal monarchy of Saudi Arabia among its clients) did its job well. Eight hundred thousand tourists visited the Bahamas last year, and with only two daily newspapers and one radio station in Nassau (all solidly pro-government), they were persistently told that all the rumors of Mafia infiltration of the chain of beautiful islands were untrue.

"Preposterous!" exclaimed the royal governor, Sir Ralph Grey. "Our police controls are so effective that American gangsters can't possibly insinuate themselves into our gambling." Sir Etienne Dupuch, editor of the Nassau Tribune, thundered, "Slander! This is a plot by Florida tourism interests to keep people from vacationing in the Bahamas, because they want the business for themselves."
The changes in the Bahamas during the past few years involve three remarkably contrasting men. One is Sir Stafford Sands, C.B.E., knighted by the Queen, a cabinet minister in the former government of the United Bahamian Party, a man so powerful in the islands that he has been know as King Stafford I. The second is Wallace Groves, a brilliant American promoter, a multimillionaire, and a man who has served two years in a federal penitentiary for fraud. And the third, of course, is Meyer Lansky himself.

Meyer Lansky, now 65, was born Maier Suchowljansky of Jewish parents in Poland. He first came to prominence in the crime world when he and the late Bugsy Seigel formed the so-called Bug and Meyer Mob, which according to Kefauver Committee testimony, was the "enforcement branch" for Mafia gambling czar frank Costello in New York and Louisiana. The Kefauver testimony reveals that Siegel and Lansky performed head-breaking and execution duties for Costello's people on the East Coast in the early 1930's when gamblers failed to make good on their losses.

Later, Lansky worked with Louis (Lepke) Buchalter, Jacob (Gurrah) Shapiro and Albert Anastasia in the notorious Italian-Jewish organization called Murder, Inc. Joe Valacchi testified to the McClellan Committee that Lansky was a close associate of Vito Gevonese, now in prison on a narcotics conviction but then the boss of bosses of all the Mafia families in the United States. As recently as last September, a Lansky associate, Florida Mafia underboss Santo Trafficante, was among 13 men arrested at a "Little Appalachian" meeting of Mafia leaders convened in a restaurant located in the Queens section of New York City.

During all this time Lansky was arrested seven times on various charges ranging up to murder, but he was never convicted. Witnesses have a habit of changing their testimony when Lansky is involved. In 1926, for example, a man named John Barrett was taken for a gangland ride, shot in the head and tossed out of the car. He miraculously survived and named Lansky as his would-be assassin. But then someone tried to poison Barrett with strychnine as he lay in his hospital bed, and he clammed up. He flatly refused to sign the complaint against Lansky, and the case eventually had to be dropped.

In 1946 Bugsy Siegel opened Las Vegas to gambling, and Lansky, his old partner, got a piece of the action. In 1955 the Nevada Tax Commission charged that Lansky had a hidden ownership in the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas through his/ brother, Jake, and a lieutenant named George Sadlo. The Commission suspended the Thunderbird's gambling license. The decision was reversed on a technicality by the Nevada Supreme Court, but ever since then Lansky has been on a list of 11 notorious persons whose very presence in a Nevada gambling casino is cause for the revocation of its license.

Long before he moved into Los Angeles, Lansky began to colonize the Caribbean for mafia gambling interests. He operated in Havana, until the fall of his friend, Cuban dictator Fulgencion Batista, and he ran profitable illegal casinos in the Colonial Inn and the Club Boheme in the Miami area. With Batista's return to power in 1952, Lansky moved back into Havana in a big way. He determined to make Havana the Las Vegas of the Caribbean and he succeeded.

Using Mafia money, he directed the building and operation of the $14 million Riviera Hotel and casino in Havana. He installed brother Jake as manager of the competing casino in the Hotel Nacional. The Las Vegas of the Caribbean boomed not only not only from its gambling business but also from the inevitable Mafia subsidiary enterprises—prostitution, narcotics, extortion. Federal agents estimate that at least a million dollars a month flowed back to the Mafia in the United States through Lansky. The Mafia investors, especially those in the Cleveland family, got quite a return on their money, which, as the FBI knows, was then used for their other traditional investments, such as the purchase of heroin.

Lansky built up a first-class organization in his Havana operation. He had Dusty Peters, the courier par excellence, shuttling the money back and forth from Cuba to Miami. He had George Sadlo, his old Las Vegas partner. He had Dino and Edward Cellini, both wizards at designing casinos. He had Frank Ritter, Max Courtney and Charles Brudner, who have been indicted as three of the biggest sports bookmakers in the United States, with casino experience at an illegal gambling palace in Saratoga, N.Y. He had a whole corps of expert casino "floor men" in Hickey Kamm, Al Jacobs, Dave Geiger, Abe Schwartz, Tony Tabasso, Roy Bell, Jim Baker, Jack Metler and Ricky Ricardo.

The bubble burst in 1959 when Fidel Castro took over the Cuban government and abolished the casinos. The Bahamian government called it a coincidence, but four years later, when it granted an exemption to its anti-gambling laws to the Bahamas Amusements. Ltd., to operate gambling casinos in the islands, who should show up among the employees? Dusty Peters, George Sadlo, Dino Cellini, Edward Cellini, plus Ritter, Courtney, Brudner, Kamm, Jacobs, Geiger, Schwartz, Tabasso, Bell, Baker, Metler and Ricky Ricardo.

The story of how gambling came to the Bahamas involves Sir Stafford Sands, 54, the ex-minister of finance and tourism. Tough, profane, and brilliant, Sands is right out of an Ian Fleming novel, a huge mountain of a man who weighs more that 300 pounds, and whose left eye is glass (the result of a childhood accident). Like many other white Bahamians, he is descended from the Tories who left the American mainland during the years after George Washington won the Revolutionary War, and his enemies in the U.S. Justice Department sometimes refer to him as "King George's revenge."

The son of a grocer, Sands did not graduate from college but he still managed to become a lawyer. He did so well in politics that he was the principle strategist behind the ingenious and complex electoral system that enabled the predominately white Untied Bahamian Party to control the Negroes. Sands owes much of his wealth to the convenient fact that the Bahamas has no conflict-of-interest law. As a lawyer, he was constantly involved in litigation with the government, which, since he was minister of finance, was often himself. Sands lives in a magnificent—called Waterloo—and he owns one of the finest collections of antique paperweights in the world. His favorite sport is shooting pigeons.

In the 1940's Sands joined forces with an American named Wallace Groves. Now 65 year old, bald and portly, Groves was a dashing figure on Wall Street in the pre-World War II period. A Virginian with two law degrees from Georgetown University, he was deemed a bit too dashing in his financial manipulations by the U.S. Justice Department. In 1941 he was convicted of mail fraud in Federal District Court in New York and sentenced to two years in the penitentiary, with two additional years suspended. Hill & Knowlton propagandists in the Bahamas used to discount this blemish on Groves' career as a youthful escapade, and they told reporters that "the Government just made an example of him for doing what everyone else was doing on Wall Street."

The record does not bear out this contention, and, in fact, The United States vs. Groves is so celebrated a case that it is still studied by students in American law schools. Groves was charged with trying to defraud the General Investment Corporation pf some three quarters of a million dollars. As a "front man," he used the company's president, who later turned state's evidence and escaped punishment. Grove's scheme involved stock manipulation and the collection of rakeoffs on commissions unnecessarily paid to one of his henchmen for deals in South America. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which reviewed the case, noted, in upholding his conviction, that the "front man" was necessary to the plans because Groves "had a bad reputation on Wall Street." While the appeal was under consideration, the trial judge John W. Clancy, deemed it necessary to hold Groves in $125,000 bail, then a record for federal courts in the United States.

When he emerged from the penitentiary in 1943, Groves gravitated to the Bahamas (he had built a home on a private island, Little Whale Cay, before his debacle), and went into the lumber business on Grand Bahama, one of the northernmost of the islands and then pretty much uninhabited./

Except for a few native fishermen and Groves's lumberjacks, no white had lived there since the days when it was an important exchange point for smuggled whiskey during prohibition. However, as Groves poked around the island, he began to realize Grand Bahama's commercial possibilities. Unlike most of the Bahama Islands, there was plenty of fresh water just below the coral-limestone surface. Another factor, unusual for the Bahamas, was deep water offshore that could accommodate the largest ships.

As he began to develop his plans, Groves naturally wanted the best lawyer in the islands, and, naturally, he ended up with Stafford Sands, who had not yet been knighted, but who was already a powerful figure as the boss of the controlling political party and a member of the government's Executive Council. Sands became engrossed in Groves's plans to develop Grand Bahama and helped mightily to guide through the legislature the Hawksbill Creek Act of 1955 (named after a body of water which bisects the island), one of the most peculiar agreements ever concluded between a government and a private individual.

The Hawksbill Creek Act virtually made Groves the Emperor of Grand Bahama, empowered to do much as he wished with 211 square miles of the 430 square miles which comprise the island He was required only to build a deep-water port and to bring in industrial and commercial enterprises. The government sold him 150,000 acres of land at $2.80 an acre, many of which he alter sold for as much as $50,000 an acre. His enclave was given freedom from Bahamian taxes until 1990; he was given total power to levy license fees on anyone who wanted to do business in his domain; and he was given a strong say in banishing anyone who displeased him, through the use of the Bahamian government's no-questions-asked deportation procedures.
The smell of a police state is still on the Groves enclave, which he calls Freeport. A restaurant manager named Rico Heller was fired from his job by a Groves lieutenant one evening after a disagreement. At three o'clock he was awakened by immigration officers pounding on his door. They ordered him off the island in four hours, leaving his belongings and property behind. A Negro Bahamian taxi driver named Dennis Hall, who somehow fell into disfavor, received an official notification that he could no longer set foot in the Freeport enclave—half his own native land—because the Hawksbill Creek Act gave Groves's Grand Bahama Port Authority "the absolute right to exclude any person and vehicle."

Despite such peculiarities, Freeport has developed phenomenally due in large part to a lack of taxes. Many reputable American, Canadian and British investors have poured in money, and the once-barren island now has a cement plant, a ship-refueling station, factories, housing developments, hotels, shops, restaurants, golf courses, churches and schools. All this is mainly for the whites. The Negroes, for the most part, live outside the enclave in wretched settlements like Eight Mile Rock, a shantytown of 10,000 or more people, without running water, sanitation or telephones. The single school is grossly overcrowded with pupils, and Groves is helping build another.

In Freeport itself, Groves and his corporations own most of the land, the harbor, the airport, the public utilities, the taxi company—and almost everything effecting the life of the island. He gets up to 10 percent of the gross receipts of the supermarkets, the theaters and other enterprises. Much of what remains is owned by Groves's friends in the United Bahamian Party, the white merchant princes of Nassau's main commercial avenue, Bay Street (they call themselves "the Bay Street Boys"). One of the beneficiaries of all this commerce is Sir Stafford Sands. As lawyer for Groves and many of the Bay Street Boys, he collects legal fees on nearly every important commercial transaction on Grand Bahama—a take that might total in the millions.

It is unclear whether Groves, Sands or both conceived the idea of sweetening the pot by importing legalized gambling into Grand Bahama. Some U.S. Government officials believe that this objective was in their minds as far back as the early 1950's when they first worked out the Hawksbill Creek agreement. The first known discussion of the subject took place at a secret meeting called by Groves on September 26, 1961, at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. Present at the meeting were Bahamian government figures and Louis Chesler, a freewheeling Canadian promoter as massive in size as Sir Stafford himself. Chesler, renowned for his impressive real-estate development activity in Florida, and just joined Groves as a partner in the Grand Bahama Development Co., which was selling building lots in Freeport.

In the winter of 1962-1962 Chesler was constructing the Lucayan Beach Hotel on Grand Bahama, when who should show up one day but Dino Cellini, Meyer Lansky's old right-hand man. Gambling was illegal in the islands, but the men building the Lucayan Beach obviously felt they could get around that problem. One former executive of Chesler's corporation recalls that what is now the Monte Carlo Casino was ostensibly built as a convention hall. The men referred to the room by a special code name—"the handball court." Cellini himself was in charge of designing "the handball court," with proper places reserved for slot machines, crap tables, etc. "They were that sure they were going to get an exemption to the anti-gambling laws," says the former executive, "and this was more than a year before the government even acted on it."

The planning of "the handball court" marked the beginning of a series of maneuvers which were strikingly similar to what was done in the 1930's to prepare Nevada for gambling. First, the plans for a large-scale public gambling casino were kept secret while potential sources of opposition were/neutralized. In Nevada the out-of-state gambling interests became the most generous financial contributors to churches and church schools. And so it was in the Bahamas. One clergyman, whom I interviewed in his rectory, admitted that he would not say one word against gambling. "The casino people donated my high school." Another minister told us, "I'm not happy about gambling, but it's the law of the land now and those people have been very helpful to us. The church got a free nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine year lease." The most vocal church opponent of gambling, Rev. Paul Blackburn, a Methodist, was recently recalled to England.
In the press, the principal threat to the proposed Bahamas gambling project was Sir Etienne Dupuch, a leathery, part-Negro crusader (now in his 60's and ailing), who owns and edits the colony's leading newspaper, The Tribune. For years Dupuch had been thundering editorially against the evils of gambling. In 1955 he had successfully squelched a previous effort to open a gambling casino on West End, another Grand Bahama resort. In 1961, however, The Tribune's anti-gambling editorials suddenly stopped. Shortly thereafter, The Tribune began to carry expensive full-page advertisements extolling the tourism and investment virtues of Freeport, which was the still mostly wilderness. The Dupuch family also publishes The Bahamas Almanac, a paperback guide to the islands. Although the handbook has a circulation of only about 10,000, the 1962 edition carried an estimated $50,000 worth of Freeport advertising.

Last year the Wall Street Journal revealed that Sir Etienne was actually on the payroll of Groves's Grand Bahama Development Co. as a "consultant" at $1,400 a month. In a letter to Groves dated February 20, 1964, Dupuch acknowledged receipt of at least two months' fees—$2,800. To this day, no one, including Groves, has been able to tell us exactly what Dupuch was supposed to do as a "consultant."

By March, 1963, the Groves-Chesler-Cellini operation was ready to take its case to the Bahamian government for an exemption to the anti-gambling laws. They went not to the legislature but to the governor's Executive Council, which then functioned as a cabinet. Their case was presented by none other than Sir Stafford Sands, who also happened to sit as a member of the Executive Council. The applicant was Bahamas Amusement. Ltd., whose shares were split equally between Louis Chesler and Groves's wife, Mrs. Georgette Groves. (Chesler resigned from the company in 1964.)

The "exemption" was granted on April 1, 1963. It provided that the company could operate casinos anywhere on Grand Bahama, just so long as they were "in, or in conjunction with, or in the vicinity of an hotel having at least two-hundred bedrooms." The Lucayan Beach Hotel happens to have 250 rooms.

Later Sir Stafford Sands, as attorney for Bahamas Amusements, Ltd., negotiated a license fee for the casinos with Sir Stafford Sands, the minister of finance. It turned out to be only $280,000 [£100,000] per year per casino (no matter how great the volume of business) plus $280 per slot machine. This was a ridiculously small sum. In Puerto Rico, for example, the well-regulated casinos have to pay 30 percent of their total earnings to the government.

The news of the "exemption" and its terms stunned the colony-especially since Huntington Hartford, the A & P multimillionaire, had previously been turned down on his offer to pay 50 percent of the proceeds to the government if he were given a gambling exemption for his Paradise Island resort in Nassau. It wasn't until 1966 that some of the details of this unusual cooperation between the Groves gambling combine and members/ of the Bahamian government began to leak out. The Wall Street Journal charged that it had uncovered records to prove that at least four members of the Executive Council had either been paid off by Groves's companies with "consultant" jobs à la Etienne Dupuch, or had otherwise profited. The four were Sands; the premier, Sir Roland Symonette; a dentist, Dr. Raymond Sawyer; and C. Trevor Kelly, then minister for maritime affairs. A fifth member of the government, Speaker of the House Robert Hallam Symonette (the premier's son), was also named. Sands, Sir Roland, Dr. Sawyer and Kelly all denied the allegations or refused to comment. Robert Symonette, a yachtsman, admitted that he had been retained as a "consultant" at $14,000 a year to advise on marina construction in the Groves enclave.
In a remarkably candid interview with me in November, Groves acknowledged that all of these payments had been made. The interview came about in a totally unexpected way. Although Groves had steadfastly refused to see any reporters prior to my arrival on Grand Bahama, I was suddenly summoned for an audience through a Hill & Knowlton intermediary. The interview took place in the Grand Bahama Port Building, which is called "the Kremlin" by the local inhabitants.
Groves talked to me in his private office, which is large and luxurious but spare in its decoration. His five college degrees were hung on one wall, and what seemed to be a small, antique treasure chest rested on his desk. Groves himself is a medium-sized portly man with a bald head, heavy jowls and darting eyes. His cufflinks were made from old Spanish doubloons taken from a wreck of a sunken 17th-century galleon recently discovered in the waters near the Lucayan Beach Hotel.

Seated alongside Groves's desk, wearing almost identical solemn-hue clothing and antique cufflinks, was his aide-de-camp, a port authority vice-president named Martin Dale. Dale is an earnest young man with red hair and moustache who once was a U. S. Foreign Service officer. He resigned a consular post to become privy councilor to Prince Rainer of Monaco. Groves hired Dale away from Rainer, and Dale was still acting as if he was in the presence of royalty. He bowed to Groves and incessantly called him "Sir." One he slipped up and began to address him as "Your Highness."

Groves was prepared for the interview with pages of closely spaced handwritten notes on a yellow legal pad in front of him. He began by talking about what a small and unimportant part of his half-billion-dollar empire the gambling operation was. He said he hoped I had the good sense to emphasize his industrial and commercial achievements rather than the gambling, "which netted me only one hundred and ninety-three-odd dollars last year." An hour later when he had exhausted the topics on his pad, I asked him, "How about the alleged 'consultant fees' to Sir Stafford Sands?" He said, "I pay a ten-thousand-a-month retainer to Sir Stafford, but I can't tell you where the legal fees end and the consultant fees begin."

I asked, "What about the 'consultant fees' to Premier Symonette, which he denies receiving?" "Well, Sir Roland did get paid. He was a consultant on road building and the construction of golf courses here." I asked, "And Dr. Sawyer?" "Oh," said Groves, "Dr. Sawyer just got a few thousand dollars. He advised us on setting up a public-health service. And before you ask me about the minister of marine affairs, Trevor Kelly, he did get the shipping contracts to supply Grand Bahama by sea."

I brought up the subject of Lansky and his henchmen, and Dale said, "If the United States has never been able to indict Lansky, why should we worry about him?" Groves hastily began to talk about his island's many golf courses, and with difficulty I got back to the matter of payments to government officials just before the end of the interview. Groves said, "How else could I express my gratitude to men like that? Besides, it wasn't that they didn't do something for their money."

Under Bahamian law and ethics—as in few other places in the world—such payments to government officials are considered perfectly proper. The full extent of the financial camaraderie between the Groves gambling interests and members of the Bahamian government may not be known until federal grand juries now sitting in New York and Philadelphia complete their investigations of the operations of Americans involved in gambling casinos in the Bahamas and elsewhere. From a former Chesler associate in Miami, s and members of the Bahamian government may not be known until federal grand juries now sitting in New York and Philadelphia complete their investigations of the operations of Americans involved in gambling casinos in the Bahamas and elsewhere. From a former Chesler associate in Miami, the New York grand jury has subpoenaed a series of five payoff contracts between the casino operators and members of the former Bahamian government. The contracts were dated April 2, 1963, through April 25, 1963—the period just after the granting of the first gambling "exemption." If proved to be authentic, these contracts alone represent actual payoffs to government officials totaling $87,808 a year.

Whatever the contractual arrangements, Meyer Lansky and his Mafia backers have been milking the casinos they helped set up and run on the islands. Lansky's men have been able to operate literally under the noses of a so-called security system which consists of routine accounting procedures (paid for and controlled by the casinos), and two inspectors (also paid for and controlled by the casinos) in each of the gambling establishments. The security men are all pleasant, elderly gentlemen retired from British colonial police jogs in outposts like Singapore and Aden. Sgt. Ralph Salerno of the Criminal Intelligence Bureau of the New York Police Department told us, "They're nice old guys who wouldn't recognize a Mafia man if he walked right up t them and offered to sell them a bag of heroin."

The technique used by Lansky is known in the trade as "skimming." U.S. law-enforcement authorities know exactly how it is done. Sgt. Salerno says, "Everyone makes the mistake of thinking that skimming is shoveling cash into briefcase before the authorities can count the night's take in a casino. Even in Las Vegas they don't do it that way. There are much simpler and more subtle methods, and all of them are being used in the Bahamas."

The first method is called The Kickback Skim. At the Monte Carlo casino on Grand Bahama, three top Lansky men employed by the establishment (Max Courtney, Frank Ritter and Charles Brudner) each received fantastic bonuses of $165,000 in 1966. These figure were reveled to me by an official high-ranking Bahamian Police source. Unofficial sources say the bonuses actually soared to as high as $330,000. U.S. organized-crime experts are convinced that most or all of this sum was "kicked back" to Lansky in Miami.

The second Mafia method of milking the Grand Bahama casinos is known as The Junket Skim. All over the United States—but particularly on the East Coast—there is a thriving group of travel agents and so-called sporting clubs whose specialty is assembling 90 or more "high-roller" gamblers with good credit and dispatching them in a chartered plane for an expense-paid weekend of gambling on Grand Bahama.

When the high-rollers lose, they often pay not the casino, but their junket manager. Thus these casino earnings never show up on the casino's books, except, possibly, for a small amount to pay the junketeers' hotel bills.
Many of the junket managers are known by U.S. law-enforcement authorities to have strong Mafia connections. Typical of them is Henry Shapiro of the Victory Sporting Club in New York. Shapiro is the son of Jacob (Gurrah) Shapiro, a renowned strong-arm man for Murder, Inc., who died in prison. The younger Shapiro has been summoned to testify before the New York Federal Grand Jury which is also investigating the "skim" from the off-shore gambling casinos. Recently, as he stepped off from a plane at Kennedy Airport with a load of returning gambling junketeers, Shapiro was intercepted and served with a subpoena by U.S. Marshall Bill Gallinaro, supervisor of the special squad of the eastern district of New York. The junket manager was then searched by customs officials under Gallinaro's direction, and/ he was found to have $30,000 in cash and $90,000 in checks in his pockets.

Sgt. Salerno estimates that at least three planeloads of junketeers per week fly from the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut area alone. Even if the net gambling losses per plane were as little as $20,000 (and some high-rollers have been know to drop that much individually in a single night at the crap table), the net gain to the mob from just these flights alone could be over three million dollars a year.

The third and possibly most profitable method of funneling money from the Grand Bahama casinos is called The Credit Skim. A with the Junket Skim this technique relies on the fact that American high-rollers do not show up with vast sums of cash, and they ask casino managers to extend them credit, against which they write personal checks and occasionally IOUs, or "markers." It is this bundle of paper profits that Dusty Peters transports to the Miami Beach bank twice a week-prior to his conference with Meyer or Jake Lansky at the Fontainebleau Hotel.

The checks go through regular bank collections in the United States. Law-enforcement experts are convinced that only part of this money, after it is collected through the banks, ever gets back to the casinos to be recorded on their books. "The rest," a high-ranking Justice Department official told me, "is bled out of the one bank account in Miami through which most of the money flows. Meyer Lansky takes his cut and sends the rest by courier to the Mafia investors he represents. These are Sam Giancana in Chicago, Steve Magaddino in Buffalo, Carlo Gambino in New York, and we're not sure but possibly Joe Zerilli in Detroit." IOUs are collected locally by their "enforcers," if necessary-in cash.
The official said, "We figure that the gross at the Monte Carlo casino on Grand Bahama in 1966 was twenty million dollars. They have certain fixed expenses such as salaries, subsidies to hotels and a license fee to the Bahamas government of about three hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. But the 'skim' from the Miami bank might be almost a third of the twenty-million-dollar gross—and we don't like where it's going."

"Their take will double in 1967 with the second casino on Grand Bahama—if the same crowd is allowed to continue to operate—and it will quadruple when the same people open the paradise Island casino in Nassau later this year. And knowing what they do with that money-bribing cops and public officials, buying heroin, paying off contracts for murder and mayhem—it's pretty damn frustrating."
When he hears the charges that the islands are harboring the Mafia, Sir Ralph Grey, Royal Governor of the Bahamas by appointment of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, replies to critics: "We can't police the world. No one has yet shown me any clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing."

But even the unskilled and bewildered local police on Grand Bahama have discovered that organized prostitution and narcotics—two traditional enterprises of the Mafia—have followed gambling to the island. The authorities recently deported three Americans for trafficking in girls and drugs. The men were Nate Saunders, Rudolph DiBeradino (alias Rudy Apollo) and John Sidoruk (alias John Rush). Both DiBeradino and Sidoruk have police records and Mafia affiliations back in New York.

The main job of these three men was importing girls, but they also indulged in some interesting specialties on the side. Sidoruk, for example, was charged with using two of the Las Vegas-trained girls to lure casino winners into a room in the King's Inn (one of the island's plushest hotels) where Sidoruk would "roll" them and relieve them of their winnings—$1,900 in one case. Sidoruk and his cohorts also inaugurated a Mafia-type extortion business, terrorizing local businessmen with threats and beatings if they did not pay protection money to the gangsters.
The American thugs had a Bahamian Negro partner in these enterprises, a big, muscular 27-year-old 'enforcer' named Gadvill Newton, who, interestingly enough, is the body guard and associate of Sir Stafford Sands. Newton calls himself Skiboo, and the name is known throughout the Bahamas. He wears sharp Miami Beach-type clothes, and he always carries a beautiful black-leather-and-silver riding crop. The riding crop is weighted with lead, and it serves effectively as a blackjack.

The Skiboo-Sidoruk alliance was finally broken up when the gentle and inexperienced local police found that they couldn't cope with the flagrantly open/ racketeering and they sent to Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, for help. The Bahamas' toughest cop, Assistant Superintendent Paul Thompson, a native of Trinidad, was sent in and he soon developed cases justifying deportation orders for the Americans. But Skiboo escaped because of his political affiliations and is now a "security officer" at one of the big Grand Bahama hotels. Discussing Saunders, DiBernadino and Sidoruk, Superintendent Thompson, a shrewd realist, says sadly, "They are only the advance guard. And I only have six men and myself."

The police-state overtones, with a few Mafia touches added, were growing before the recent elections. Prime targets were the American reporters, who are frequently called "muckrakers" on the island and are blamed for stirring up the whole mess "in their quest for sensationalism." The Post team of reporters and photographers was under constant harassment. Mail sent by us to reporter Don Richards in Freeport arrived with the envelopes blatantly slit open, and officials in Sands's ministry of tourism revealed to us that they knew the contents of the letters even before Richards had received them. Sands's officials also knew the details of our private phone and hotel-room conversations-indicating that we were both wiretapped and bugged.

The Mafia touches showed up in two attempts at "the frame," a traditional stratagem to trick the reporter into a compromising situation so that he can be later discredited as being unfit to pass moral judgment on others. This is a ploy which has been used before with varying degrees of success, against reporters investigating organized crime in the United States. Our first exposure to "the frame" came on Grand Bahama, when reporter Richards was invited to a party at an isolated private home at which, he was told, "people inside Bahamas Amusements. Ltd., would reveal all about the company's books." Richards, under orders, did not go. We learned later from an informant that the party was a homosexual affair at which Richards was to be drugged and "set up" for photographs.

The second attempt at "the frame" took place in Nassau, where the Post team consisted of myself, my wife (writer Muriel Davidson), and Richards. We returned to our hotel one day after a full schedule of interviews to find out that Richards had been checked out of his room by the management and checked into our room, without our knowledge or permission. A cot had been squeezed into the already overcrowded cubicle. While we discussed the situation, a key was turned in the lock of the door and a man burst in. He surveyed the scene for a moment or two, then left. There was a small camera around his neck, and he obviously had menage-à-trois photography in mind—but Muriel was primly talking on the telephone, Richards was in a chair poring over papers, and I was in the bathroom. We checked Muriel out of the hotel immediately, and since all other Nassau hotels were closed to us, spirited her to the home of a friendly white Bahamian family, where she spent the night.

In the morning her hosts expressed shame and outrage at what had happened. A descendant of one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the Bahamas, the husband said, "This gambling situation is a real rat's nest. It's all the decent Bahamian talks about. The government tells us that gambling is increasing tourism, but most of us feel the number of tourists would have increased anyways. Gambling is just bringing in the wrong kind of tourist and driving the respectable ones away. It's all so incredibly stupid and incredibly crooked."

Then the man who had helped my wife pleaded with us: "Please don't judge all of us Bahamians by the few who are doing this. It happens because the white people fear them. The colored people hate their guts."

Up to that time—December, 1966—the Negroes of the Bahamas had been able to mount only a weak threat to the white rulers because of the voting provisions of the Bahamian constitution, which was cleverly engineered by Sir Stafford Sands. As in Great Britain, the government is formed by the party that wins the most seats in the legislature. Under a Boundaries Commission authorized by the constitution, the ruling white United Bahamian party had gerrymandered the election districts so that it takes a little as 150 votes to win a seat from the poorly-populated "out islands," where the poorest Negroes live, and as many as 2,500 votes in the heavily populated districts of Nassau, where the better-educated Negroes are centered. By granting small favors—money, whiskey, a new roof, a pair of shoes, occasional medical care—white politicians have always been able to carry enough of the "out islands" to more than offset their losses in Nassau.
In the 1962 elections the Negro opposition parties scored heavily in Nassau and won nearly 65 percent of the total popular vote in the Bahamas, yet because of the misapportioned constituencies they ended up with only 9 of the 33 seats in the House of Assembly. The United Bahamian Party was firmly in control with 24 seats.

Actually, however, that 1962 defeat proved to be fateful for the Bahamas, because it brought to the fore an aggressive young Negro, Lynden O. Pindling, who won a seat in New Providence and became the leader of the opposition. A chunky, tiny man of boundless energy, Pindling, 36, is the son of a policeman. He is a lawyer, educated in England at the University of London. In the 1962-1966 period he became the firebrand leader that the Bahamian Negro population had always lacked.

Pindling railed against the iniquities of the U.B.P.'s electoral system and carried his complaints to the United Nations. When the Meyer Lansky situation emerged into the open, he went to England to request a Royal Commission to investigate not only the gambling operations but also the alleged white-ruler corruption which had fostered them. He told the British government, "We do not wish violence; nor do we condone it. W do not wish the fate of China or Cuba or Nigeria to befall us in the Bahamas. The time is now for skillful surgeons to wield a sharp political scalpel to save the Bahamian body politic from cancer. The cancer is corruption."
At home Pindling gleefully cooperated with any American and British reporter investigating gambling in the islands. By December, 1966, Sir Stafford Sands and his fellow ministers in the U.B.P. apparently decided to crush Pindling and his Progressive Liberal Party (P.L.P.) once and for all. Although they were not required to call an election until as late as November, 1967, the U.B.P. decided to conduct one on January 10.

Pindling, at first stunned by the premature election campaign, soon turned it to his advantage. He told his people, who are deeply religious, "In the Bible, in the Book of Exodus, the Lord said to the Children of Israel that He would deliver them from the Egyptians on the tenth day of the first month, and when is our election? The tenth day of the first month." He warned them that this would be their last chance to save themselves from the fate of the Negroes of Rhodesia. "The U.B.P. is already filling civil-service positions in the government with Negro-hating whites from South Africa and Rhodesia," he said (which was true), "and they're playing South African government programs on the Bahamas radio station. They're planning to set up an independent, white republic." Wherever he went, he talked about the Meyer Lansky infiltration of the gambling casinos.

The white U.B.P. candidates ran a routine campaign, reminding people of the prosperity they were enjoying. They did not even seem disturbed when Pindling acquired a helicopter from an American supporter and hopped from island to island, matching the best they could do with their own air transport. On the eve of the election they predicted the U.B.P. would win at least 25 of the 38 seats in the legislature. All American political observers in the island agreed with them. Barring a miracle, Sands and his party seemed sure to continue their control over the Bahamas and life would go on much as before.
Then the miracle happened. On election day the Negroes poured out to go to the polls with a purpose thy had never exhibited before. Pindling's P.L.P. workers performed their duties like Bobby Kennedy men. Even the taxi drivers organized a communications system for the P.L.P through their car radios. When the results came in, there was literally dancing in the streets. The P.L.P. had won 18 seats. The U.B.P. had also won 18 seats, but the other two seats were taken up by a Labor Party candidate and by a white independent. The Labor Party man, at least, could be counted on to vote with the P.L.P., giving it a majority of one. But by January 13, Pindling felt he had the support of the independent. On January 14 Sands and the rest of the U.B.P. government resigned. On January 16 Pindling and his party took over. A British warship nervously standing by in the harbor, withdrew. There were no riots or recriminations against the former white rulers. A British newspaperman told me, "I guess you'd have to call this a triumph of basic democracy. It was quite a change for this part of the world—a peaceful revolution."
The peaceful revolution was evident, on the surface at least, when I returned to the Bahamas immediately after the election. Wherever I walked in Nassau, the entire Negro population seemed to be smiling again—for the first time in years. Sidney Poitier, a strong Pindling supporter, told me, "Even the flowers will be back."

But in the hard world of realistic politics, the "triumph of basic democracy" was not that clear-cut. The white economic princes of the U.B.P. still hold all the economic power. On the day Pindling took office, Sir Roland Symonette, closed down his shipyard, throwing all of his Negro employees out of work, The U.B.P.-controlled newspapers ran stories indicating that foreign investors, fearful of Pindling's mildly socialist party, were pulling out of the islands—thus posing the threat of a severe eco-/nomic depression. Pindling reacted by doing everything he could to allay the fears of the white community. Instead of firing the American public relations firm Hill & Knowlton-as he had promised—Pindling retained the company, and it began to grind out publicity for him just as it had for his archenemy, Sir Stafford Sands, just a few days before. Many Pindling supporters felt this was a serious mistake. It then turned out that Pindling had made other "mistakes." For example, it was discovered that—unknown to Pindling—the American who had loaned him the helicopter for his campaign was Mike McLaney, a former associate of Meyer Lansky in the gangster's Havana gambling empire. Pindling vehemently denies knowing that McLaney was his benefactor.

I spent considerable time with Pindling in the first troubled days of his administration. One interview took place in his home, a tastefully furnished ranch house exactly like those in hundreds of American suburbs. Pindling's wife, Marguerite, a beautiful, intelligent young woman, served us a native lunch of "market fish" on magnificent Jamaican china. Then Pindling and I talked. "I've got to go slow," he said. "I've got to dispel the radical 'black power' image our enemies have created. I want all the economic and agricultural help I can get from the United Nations. I want all the help I can get from the United States."
"Are you going to go slow in rooting the Mafia out of Bahamas gambling?" I asked.

"Yes and no," he said. "In the first place, I feel that the basis of Mafia power lies in the corruption of public officials, and we've already taken steps to make it a conflict of interests for a government official to profit from the casinos. All of my ministers have given up their businesses and professions, We want a full-time government.

"In the second place," he continued, "I'm going to renew my request to the British to send in a Royal Commission to investigate thoroughly the whole mess-and at the same time let them investigate the U.B.P. charge that my government is infiltrated with Communists. I also will ask the United States Justice Department to give us full information on the Americans working in the casinos. There will be no compromise with the undesirable element. They must go. But I don't want to close the casinos right away. That might be disastrous to the economy of the islands. I want to make a careful study pf the well-regulated, government-controlled gambling system in Puerto Rico, and if it can be adopted here, eventually we'll probably adopt it."

The Post team of reporters investigated the Puerto Rican casinos as thoroughly as those in the Bahamas, and we could find no evidence of malfeasance in the American island commonwealth. The casinos are administered under the tight control of a Government department, and George M. Moll, director of the Division of Games and Chance, has the power to withhold licenses and to close down casinos on a moment's notice, if anything suspicious occurs.

The management of the casinos must be investigated and approved by the FBI to make sure that there is no Mafia or otherwise malodorous association through hidden ownership. One hotel lost it gambling license within 24 hours after an associate of Teamsters Union President James R. Hoffa was found to a hidden owner.

All casino personnel-croupiers, dealers, supervisors, managers-must also be cleared by the FBI as well as the local police. No one is allowed to work in any capacity in a casino unless he has been a bona fide resident of Puerto Rico for ten years. "This provision alone has totally discouraged the Mafia," says Moll, "Even they wouldn't wait ten years to infiltrate a man into a casino, provide he could get past the FBI check."

A Justice Department official, who admires the Puerto Rican setup, says: "One thing that has always amused me about the Bahamian situation is that the government has always claimed that it had to use Lansky men as supervisors because no one else knew how to sum American-style casinos. The Puerto Rican gambling personnel are the best and cleanest in the world, but the Bahamas people never made any attempt to hire them."

In the Bahamas the unexpected results of the January 10 election have stirred up anxiety—if nothing else—among the Americans who work in the casinos. On Grand Bahama the Meyer Lansky men confine themselves to their hotel rooms and beaches during the day, and they do not speak to the patrons of the casinos any more than they have to at night. Every arriving convention group is sus-/pected of harboring FBI men in disguise. There are rumors that Scotland Yard men from England are working undercover within the Groves organization. It remains to be seen what will happen to the prostitutes, who now shuttle over from Miami on the weekends.

But there's also a feeling of cautious optimism among the Lansky men. The gamblers seem to feel that this is just an interlude; that after a period of depression and economic uncertainty in the islands, Sir Stafford Sands will return. They are aware of a curious division of sentiment in the United States Government, and the fact that they might have an unwilling ally in, strange enough, the State Department.

Before the Pindling victory on January 10, there was serious disagreement in Washington as to how to handle the developing crisis in the Bahamas. The State department was for maintaining the status quo, preferring to deal with the Sir Stafford Sands-dominated white government rather than to risk another Congo, or worse, just 70 miles from our shores. On the other hand the Justice Department—making one of its rare forays into the foreign-policy area—felt that it was highly dangerous to have a major Mafia stronghold so close to Florida. They pointed to a similar, though less drastic situation in Jamaica, where a Negro government took over—after a British Royal Commission investigation of white corruption—and has ruled ably and well ever since.

The hard-nosed gambling men on Grand Bahama are betting on the eventual triumph of the State Department's point of view. So far the Justice Department has been able to do little to get at the gamblers, other than to call for federal grand juries in New York and Philadelphia to try to trace the flow of casino money to specific members of the Mafia in the United States.

The only American in the operation to receive any punishment recently, however mild, were three close associates of Meyer Lansky who were key employees of the Monte Carlo casino—Max Courtney, the chief supervisor; Charles Brudner, the floor manager; and Frank Ritter, the credit manager. After the Wall Street Journal called attention to their identities, and noted that all three were fugitives from justice in the United States, the Bahamian government moved against them, more or less. They were allowed to remain in the islands as residents. ("I've heard of political asylum," Lynden Pindling said at the time, "but this is the first time I've heard of criminal asylum.") The three men were told to get out of the casinos by January 15.

It so happened that the island's newest gambling establishment, the $2.5 million El Casino, gaudier than anything in Las Vegas, opened on January 1, and Courtney, Ritter and Brudner were on hand to give a two-weeks' cram course in running the place to the new boys who, it so happens, were friends of Lansky's from the old days.

El Casino is a garish structure built to resemble a Moslem mosque. Its exterior is illuminated at night with multiple-colored floodlights, and it was described by one opening-night patron as looking like "a high-class bordello in the Casbah." Another said he expected to see an Arab in one of the minarets summoning the faithful with the cry of "Come seven, come eleven."

In Nassau, the small, dignified Bahamian Club, a club which has been taken over by Groves people, had a full house on New Year's Eve. The Bahamian Club will be closed when Paradise Enterprises, Ltd., begins to operate Groves's third casino-another mammoth structure now rising on Paradise Island, just across Nassau Harbor. "It will have a high dome and look just like St. Paul's church in London," says Ronald Gowlding, Groves's executive vice-president. Workers are halfway through building a multimillion-dollar bridge to Paradise Island, which now can only be reached by ferry.

In addition to all this, several new hotels are under construction both in Nassau and on Grand Bahama. Each is eagerly planning a "convention hall" that could be converted into a casino. In his campaign, Pindling said, "How long will it be before we have a Mafia-run casino in every hotel? It could be Las Vegas all over again-but at least in Las Vegas a good deal of the money gets back to the people."
Every morning in the hovels of Eight Mile Rock on Grand Bahama and "over-the-hill" in Nassau, native Negro workers get up and go to work on the various construction projects, They appreciate the money the work has brought them, but they have mixed sentiments about the future of the structures they are erecting. We talked with one native worker recently as he as putting the finishing touches on the landscaping around El Casino. He looked up at the flamboyant building and frowned. "I don't know," he said in his lilting Bahamian accent, "there's a powerful feelin' of evil here."

Just then a car went by on the highway called The Mall. In it was Dusty Peters, cigar in face, on his way to the airport for his twice-weekly conference with Meyer Lansky in Miami Beach.” Very sad that this had to happen and to this day, we Bahamians are paying the price because of the above information which indicates how our forefathers sold us out for money. God help us.”

Mr. John Doe
The Voice of Morality