Renderings of the proposed Terre Haute Racino.
(Spectacle Entertainment)
The Indiana Gaming Commission is investigating the company that owns two casinos along Lake Michigan and is seeking to open a new Terre Haute casino after a political consultant pleaded guilty to federal charges of illegally funneling campaign contributions for an Indianapolis-based gaming company.
The commission said Friday the federal case inVirginiainvolving executives of Centaur Gaming, whose executives formed Spectacle Entertainment in 2018, prompted it to cancel the Feb. 7 meeting that was set to consider granting Spectacle the Terre Haute casino license. Prosecutors only identify it as “Company A” in court documents while saying it was involved in a scheme directing more than $15,000 in illegal corporate contributions to an Indiana congressional candidate.
“The information we received is concerning and the Commission has begun a review pursuant to its statutory responsibilities into this matter,” said a statement from Deputy Director Jennifer Reske.
Spectacle's general counsel, John Keeler, didn’t immediately return telephone and email messages from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Spectacle’s executives have been active lobbyists in the Indiana Legislature for many years, and Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb faced a state ethics review last year of his dealings with Spectacle CEO Rod Radcliff.
Spectacle also owns the two Gary casinos along Lake Michigan and won state legislative approval last year to close them in favor of building a new $400 million casino at a more lucrative on-land site along Interstate 80/94 in Gary. The company was the only one that submitted a bid for the casino license in Terre Haute, where it is proposing to build a $125 million casino and potentially hire 600 workers.
The new state investigation comes after Charles O’Neil, a vice president of Virginia-based Strategic Campaign Group, pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiracy to make illegal campaign contributions. He admitted to arranging for several people write checks to the Indiana candidate’s campaign in 2015 with casino company money funneled through a fake $38,500 contract with Strategic Campaign Group for political work, according to court documents.
Strategic Campaign Group President Kelley Rogers was sentenced last week to three years in prison for fraud as part of the federal investigation of fraud by the firm.
The Indiana candidate isn’t identified by prosecutors, but Federal Election Commission records indicate it was Republican former state Sen. Brent Waltz of Greenwood, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2016, The Washington Post reported.
Waltz told the Indianapolis Business Journal that he was interviewed as part of an investigation of Rogers about 18 months ago.
“Mr. Rogers was a consultant for the campaign in the summer of 2015,” Waltz said. “I have answered every question asked of me by investigators. To the best of my knowledge all campaign contributions from my 2016 congressional campaign were legal. I will cooperate with any investigation.”
Radcliff and Keeler were top executives of Centaur Gaming, which sold Indiana's two horse track casinos in Anderson and Shelbyville to Las Vegas-based Caesars Entertainment Corp. in 2018 for $1.7 billion. They soon formed Spectacle to buy the Gary casino operation along Lake Michigan and lobbied state legislators last year to allow its move to an on-land location.
The Indianapolis Star reported in March that Radcliff treated Holcomb to private jet flights in 2018 as they traveled together for meetings hosted by the Republican Governors Association inColoradoandArizona. But the state’s inspector general concluded the governor committed no wrongdoing as it determined the flights were provided to the governor’s group rather than Holcomb's office.
The flights were among $500,000 Ratcliff and his companies contributed in 2018 to the Republican Governors Association, which gave Holcomb $7.6 million of the $14.5 million he spent on his 2016 election campaign.
