In 2013, two government politicians and two local businessmen began discussing how a future casino industry might look in Bermuda. Their plans did not pan out, but many of their e-mail conversations have been finally released under public access to information, along with those of others who tried to get the island's gaming sector up and running

Guadalajara, Mexico, is a place so notorious for crime and kidnapping that the United States Government advises travellers to reconsider any plans to go there. So when a Cabinet minister from Bermuda paid a visit to the city on official business in November 2013, it made sense to ensure he was well protected.

Shawn Crockwell’s hosts did just that, hiring an ex-agent from the US Drug Enforcement Agency and a former military general to look after him on his trip to see how cashless gaming worked in Guadalajara’s Twin Lions Casino.

The bodyguards were hired by MM&I, a private technology company hoping to convince Mr Crockwell, the tourism minister, and his Cabinet colleagues that they had a product to offer which would help keep any future casinos in Bermuda free of corruption.

The company also booked the minister’s stay at the five-star Quinta Real Guadalajara hotel and “secure transportation services” while there.

Bermudians Mike Moniz and John Tartaglia, owners of MM&I, were out to impress, hoping to become the sole, government-approved providers of a cashless gaming software system for the island which they had developed with US partner company Banyan Gaming.

Although casinos were not yet legal in Bermuda, the pair, who had no prior experience in the gaming industry, knew that Mr Crockwell and his fellow Cabinet minister, Mark Pettingill, wanted to introduce them to boost tourism.

A Cabinet gaming committee had been formed to look at the options.

The arrangements for the two-night Guadalajara trip were set out in an October 24, 2013 message from Mr Moniz to Mr Crockwell, to which Mr Tartaglia and Mr Pettingill, then the attorney-general, were copied in.

Mr Moniz wrote: “The costs for secure transportation services will be at MM&I’s expense.

“The cost of your hotel will be at MM&I’s expense and we will book it for you.”

He wrote: “Physical security will be handled by us. Please rest assured that we take this responsibility very seriously …”

Such details, fleshing out a story first told in a 2017 special report by The Royal Gazette, are littered throughout a trove of e-mails disclosed by the Cabinet Office on the orders of the Information Commissioner.

MM&I tried to block their release on the grounds that they were confidential and contained personal and commercial information. It has taken more than six years for them all to see the light of day under public access to information, although some were disclosed to the newspaper in 2018 and 2021.

Mr Tartaglia recently shared a lengthy statement with the Gazette in response to the disclosure of the e-mails.

Regarding the Guadalajara trip, he said: “That e-mail was written by Mr Moniz before the trip occurred.

“The security protection was necessary for all party members because of the very high-risk location and the fact that having a government minister in that party would significantly increase the risk for everyone.

“The fact is that on his return, Mr Moniz told me Minister Crockwell settled his own hotel expenses on checkout.”

The Gazette pursued the Pati request in the belief that MM&I and Banyan’s attempts to be involved in the nascent casino industry — and the concerns that the Bermuda Gaming Commission raised about their potential involvement, under both the One Bermuda Alliance and Progressive Labour Party administrations — were of public interest.

Information Commissioner Gitanjali Gutierrez agreed. Ordering the release of records in a 2021 decision, she wrote “that significant public interest concerns weigh in favour of disclosure”.

Ms Gutierrez explained the public had a “strong interest” in understanding the “manner in which elected officials conducted business with a company that sought to provide services to the Government at the public’s expense”.

The e-mails now disclosed reveal the discussions and attempted dealmaking that went on behind the scenes more than a decade ago, well before the Bermuda Casino Gaming Act was enacted.

Fast forward to today and attempts to set up the sector have stalled seemingly indefinitely, with no bank willing to handle the proceeds of casino gaming on the island and a regulatory body which was recently “streamlined” after costing taxpayers more than $16 million since its inception.

2013

MM&I initially presented its software product to Mr Pettingill on June 14 and then again to him and Mr Crockwell, at the latter’s home, on July 3.

Mr Crockwell was impressed enough to e-mail the gaming committee the next day to say Mr Moniz would give them a presentation on a gaming model which “will be extremely useful in assisting the committee’s deliberations on this very pressing matter”.

On July 5, a non-disclosure agreement was signed between MM&I and the Government. The presentation to the committee and Craig Cannonier, then the Premier, was on July 8. Mr Tartaglia told the Gazette: “The Premier and six members of Cabinet were present and everyone was extremely impressed with MM&I’s initial concept design.”

Mr Moniz followed up later on July 5 with an e-mail to Mr Cannonier’s Chief of Staff, Dale Jackson, proposing to connect the One Bermuda Alliance leader with a representative of the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas.

Mr Cannonier was visiting the Caribbean island to attend its independence celebrations and Mr Moniz said he, too, would be in the country that week, staying at the oceanside Atlantis. He wrote that he would “consider it a privilege to have the Premier and his guest(s) out for dinner” at the resort’s Bahamian Club.

Mr Jackson congratulated him on the gaming model presentation, adding: “I believe your vision is the way forward.”

Mr Moniz replied with talk of big names and big numbers. He proposed introducing Mr Cannonier to Kerzner International, the luxury developer and operator of Atlantis, suggesting they might be willing to invest between $500 million and $1 billion+ in Bermuda if they could have the “exclusive on casinos for a time period to optimise their ROI [like they did in Bahamas]”.

He offered to “strategise” with the Premier on “a story to tell about what Bermuda is prepared to do/allow them to do as investors”, before a suggested meeting in Dubai.

He shared his e-mail to Mr Jackson with Mr Tartaglia, who forwarded it to Mr Pettingill and Mr Crockwell.

Mr Cannonier told the Gazette recently that he did not have talks with Atlantis or Kerzner, did not meet Mr Moniz for dinner at the Bahamian Club and did not “strategise” with him.

“It was all talk,” he said. “I knew nothing about it.”

However, he recalled that while in the Bahamas, he was “ambushed” during a lunch with his wife and was asked to look at the electronic gaming machines at the Atlantis’s casino.

He wasn’t sure who the two men were who showed them the equipment, but said he had earlier declined to meet with anyone to do with gaming while in the Bahamas.

“I was so incensed by it. I was upset about the fact that nothing was set up, no appointments were confirmed.”

Mr Cannonier said when he became premier he shifted responsibility for gaming to the tourism minister. He said he asked Mr Crockwell and Mr Pettingill to liaise with MM&I, as he did not want direct involvement.

Things moved fast for MM&I in terms of its relationship with the Government of Bermuda.

By August, Mr Tartaglia, a former Bermuda Police Service detective, was referring to an “exclusive agreement already in place between” the two parties.

He had previously written to Mr Crockwell to criticise an anti-gaming position paper by a concerned pressure group which was printed in the Gazette. He urged the minister to counteract it with a “positive and informative response” about casinos, adding: “We would like to work with you in crafting the message.”

On August 26, he offered a “working, hands-on demonstration” of MM&I and Banyan’s “cashless, card-based system” for the gaming committee and a “definitive gaming controls recommendation analysis report”.

Mr Tartaglia said “in the spirit” of the “exclusive agreement” MM&I had with the Government, the demonstration and assessment would be free of charge.

He wrote: “If selected, this report will form the baseline for MM&I to act as the gaming regulatory agency to implement slot machine gaming controls in Bermuda.”

It was an odd turn of phrase, since it would be highly unusual to have a private, profitmaking entity in the casino industry act as a “regulatory agency”.

In any case, it wasn’t to be. An independent gaming commission was set up, with Michael Dunkley, the Premier, recruiting attorney Alan Dunch — a law firm colleague, friend and mentor of Mr Crockwell’s — to be chairman.

Mr Tartaglia, who has never worked in the casino industry, said in his recent statement that a “major part of the business relationship with the Government was based on … the understanding that MM&I would act as a source of gaming expertise and education to members of the Government, stakeholders and associates, the community, and to the gaming commission, once in place.”

However, as the Gazette’s special report detailed, it was the commission which eventually kiboshed MM&I’s hopes of being the sole provider of software to the gaming industry, after Mr Pettingill had quit the Cabinet and was representing the company as its lawyer.

The gaming commission, led by Mr Dunch, hired Richard Schuetz, a US casino industry veteran who had been a regulator in California and a chief executive in Las Vegas, as its executive director, and he raised a red flag about MM&I and Banyan.

Mr Schuetz could not fathom why the island would want to implement an unfamiliar cashless system in its casinos.

He told the Gazette: “The whole point was that Bermuda’s tourist base was American, and so we wanted to gear the gaming products to what Americans were accustomed to.

“We wanted them to get off the plane or ship and have a seamless transition into the casino experience.”

Mr Schuetz reached out to his longstanding contacts in the casino industry to check Banyan’s references and, according to a May 2, 2017 e-mail from the commission’s general counsel to Mr Tartaglia, the “written and verbal responses from these individuals was generally less than glowing”.

The e-mail disclosures show the advice Mr Schuetz offered to Mr Dunch in 2016 to deal with MM&I’s persistence — and how the commission chairman came to see the company’s continued push to be involved as a “set-up”.

Back on September 30, 2013, MM&I gave its “hands-on, working demonstration” to the gaming committee and Mr Pettingill, in his capacity as Attorney-General, requested the very same day that a memorandum of understanding between the company and the Government be drawn up.

Mr Tartaglia pointed out in his recent statement that the MOU was “not a contract” and that it existed to “direct and govern the further development of the cashless gaming solution”.

A fast chain of events followed: MM&I gave a presentation to the Cabinet on October 22 and the full Cabinet approved the MOU on November 26, 2013. A Bill to allow a gaming referendum was tabled in the House of Assembly by Mr Crockwell three days later.

The MOU contained details of the proposed deal: a ten-year contract for MM&I, with the option to renew for another ten years, with the company to receive 40 per cent of the country’s gross gaming revenue from electronic gaming devices and an 8 per cent transaction fee on the purchase of chips for use at dealer-operated tables.

Mr Tartaglia told the Gazette: “Government would not pay for anything. MM&I never, at any time, asked the Bermuda Government for a single dollar from the public purse to implement, manage and support our cashless gaming system.

“[There] was zero risk to Government. Any and all financial losses would be underwritten by MM&I.”

The rewards had the potential to be substantial. The 2010 government green paper on gaming projected Bermuda’s annual revenue from casinos to be between $84 million and $146 million, with electronic gaming likely to account for about three quarters of that.

Mr Schuetz wrote in an e-mail dated August 2, 2017, released previously under Pati, that “certain people on this island” believed they could make as much as $40 million a year from the cashless gaming deal.

Mr Tartaglia said he and Mr Moniz planned to give “percentages of realised profits back to the community” through targeted programmes or an organised charity scheme.

Mr Crockwell and Mr Pettingill signed the MOU with MM&I on December 3. Ten days later, the Government announced it would not hold a referendum after all, breaking an election promise, and signalling it was determined to make casinos a reality, with or without public support.

2014

It was a tumultuous time in Bermuda politics, and casinos were at the heart of the drama.

In February, Marc Bean, the Opposition leader, alleged under cloak of parliamentary privilege that Mr Cannonier had told him he was in line for a bribe from an unnamed developer in exchange for a gaming licence, and that Mr Pettingill and Mr Crockwell would get paid, too.

Shadow finance minister David Burt, protected by parliamentary privilege, also made allegations of corruption, claiming Mr Cannonier tried to bribe him to support ditching the referendum.

Mr Cannonier said the allegations of both MPs were “reckless” and untrue. He also defended Mr Pettingill and Mr Crockwell, saying the Opposition had targeted them. He told a press conference he would sue for slander.

Mr Cannonier, now an opposition MP, told the Gazette recently “it was agreed among the lawyers“ to drop the legal action.

Recalling that period, he said: “It was the wildest thing I have ever been through. I would never want to relive that.”

In May, Mr Cannonier resigned the leadership, toppled by the Jetgate scandal, in which he, Mr Pettingill and Mr Crockwell were revealed to have travelled on the private jet of a wealthy American businessman who had donated $300,000 to an OBA election fund account set up by political adviser the Reverend Derrick Green.

Mr Pettingill quit Cabinet soon after, remaining a backbench MP and a member of the gaming committee. He was one of the recipients of an e-mail sent by Mr Crockwell on September 4 showing MM&I was still in the mix.

The minister wrote that he had asked the company, along with gaming consultancy Spectrum, to look at policy questions and submit recommendations.

The Pati disclosure shows Mr Tartaglia seeking to help formulate the Government’s casinos plan. The businessman urged the minister in a September 12 e-mail to ensure that gaming legislation included the “requirement that Bermuda’s gaming industry be regulated and controlled” with a central electronic monitoring system.

Mr Crockwell later asked his permanent secretary to ensure the e-mail was sent to the drafter of the gaming Bill, as it contained “some good points and recommendations”.

The Casino Gaming Act was passed on December 12.

2015

Mr Tartaglia soon followed up with congratulations and another offer of help.

He wrote that MM&I had hired an expert “as part of the preparation to develop, implement and provide the central network system for all gaming in Bermuda”. The expert’s name was redacted from the disclosure.

A meeting in either Bermuda or Atlantic City — the latter being where the principals of Banyan Gaming ran a slot-machine business for more than a decade — was proposed.

Mr Crockwell wrote to Mr Dunch, whom he had asked to become chairman of the gaming commission, to suggest it would be “advantageous to meet with this gentleman”.

Mr Dunch replied with questions about Mr Tartaglia’s company. “Who are MM&I?” he asked. “What has been their involvement to date?”

Mr Crockwell told him about the MOU, noting it “did not evolve into an agreement”. He said Cabinet was impressed with the company, but later made clear to Mr Dunch that opting to use the company’s software product would be a “matter for the commission”.

MM&I made two presentations to the newly formed regulator and, in May, along with Banyan, it responded to a government request for quotes for implementing and operating a gaming network management system.

Five other companies also submitted RFQ proposals.

According to a timeline drawn up by Mr Schuetz, released previously under Pati, Mr Dunch was unaware of the RFQ.

Mr Dunch visited the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Florida with Mr Crockwell and MM&I on May 11 to see how a cash-based casino worked. An earlier Pati disclosure revealed they ran into PLP MP Zane DeSilva while there.

Mr Tartaglia said that Mr Moniz demonstrated how non-cashless gaming machines could be abused.

In the meantime, Mr Pettingill had set up a new law firm, advertising it as having expertise in gaming law.

MM&I’s efforts to be chosen as the provider of a cashless gaming system continued throughout 2015, including after the arrival of Mr Schuetz in September.

2016

Mr Crockwell resigned from Cabinet in March and was succeeded as tourism minister by Michael Fahy.

By May, Mr Crockwell was working as director of litigation at Mr Pettingill’s law firm.

On June 9, Mr Tartaglia wrote to Mr Dunch, complaining that his company had heard nothing from the gaming commission since sending information in December 2015 requested by its general counsel and Mr Schuetz.

He detailed his firm’s work over four years to develop its system and argued that the MOU and MM&I’s “successful completion of the mandatory RFQ process” meant the company was fully qualified “as the service provider for Bermuda, which we expect to have reflected in the legislation/regulations”.

Mr Dunch was not convinced. The Pati disclosure from the Cabinet Office shows that he forwarded Mr Tartaglia’s e-mail to Mr Fahy with the words: “Shawn is representing them and I suspect he wrote this. It looks like a set-up to me.”

Mr Dunch told Mr Fahy later that day that he would not meet with Mr Dunkley, the Premier, “unless I am assured of his undivided attention”. Mr Dunch added: “I am even more fed up now, given nothing has happened since we met, and the e-mail from MMI (sic) this morning, authored I am sure by MP/SC, has not helped.”

The next day, he asked Mr Schuetz and Mr Fahy to look at an e-mail he had drafted to Mr Tartaglia. His e-mail was redacted but Mr Schuetz advised: “ … you might want to include a statement that it is our duty to hold true to the Casino Gaming Act of 2014 and there is certainly no mention in that foundational document regarding the products he is trying to sell.

“Furthermore, there is no intent to include such language in the regulations now being drafted. I think we want to establish that there is no statutory provision mandating that we even consider their product.”

Mr Tartaglia said in his recent statement: “Mr Dunch was incorrect in his e-mail. Shawn Crockwell went on to be employed at law firm Chancery Legal when he resigned from government, but I have no recollection of Mr Crockwell ever directly representing MM&I.”

On June 10, the gaming commission’s general counsel asked Mr Tartaglia for a copy of the signed MOU between MM&I and the Government.

He sent it on June 12, along with information about how the company had presented a document on financial controls for gaming to “executive management and money-laundering specialists” at Butterfield Bank, in light of the “concern in the banking community” about the introduction of gaming.

Mr Tartaglia claimed: “We were able to alleviate their banking concerns by clearly showing how our know your customer/know your player system controls — with real-time transaction transparency/auditing of all financial activity, and by implementing a cashless casino floor — fully mitigate money-laundering risks.”

To date, Butterfield and the island's other two banks, Clarien and HSBC, have not agreed to bank the proceeds of casinos in Bermuda.

Mr Dunch told Mr Tartaglia on June 13 that the commission had “no intention of including anything” in the regulations that the latter had set out in his June 9 e-mail.

On June 24, several PLP MPs, including Mr DeSilva, took aim at Mr Schuetz in the House of Assembly, criticising the commission for inviting representatives of Caesar’s Palace, one of the most famous luxury casino hotels in Las Vegas, to the island.

Derrick Burgess told Parliament that Mr Schuetz’s wife was among the Caesar’s executives who visited.

In fact, it was his ex-wife, from whom he had been divorced for many years, and their relationship was no secret. Mr Crockwell had dinner with Mr Schuetz and the Caesar’s contingent.

On July 2, Mr Crockwell quit the OBA.

On July 13, Mr Dunch issued a furious press release, accusing parliamentarians of potentially deterring “hundreds of millions of dollars” worth of investment in the island by Caesar’s with their “political theatre”.

He said the comments made in the House on June 24 about the company’s exploratory visit here may have put paid to hundreds of jobs for Bermudians.

Mr Fahy terminated the MOU with MM&I on Mr Schuetz’s recommendation on July 18.

The company didn’t give up. Mr Pettingill wrote an e-mail to the minister on the firm’s behalf in August, pressing for a meeting.

In November, he spoke out publicly against legislation preventing Cabinet ministers from involvement in the gaming industry for two years after leaving office, saying it would prevent Mr Crockwell from representing anyone in the casino industry until March 2018.

In an e-mail to Mr Fahy after the legislation passed, he wrote that as “an OBA backbencher, who supported the Bill despite some serious misgivings, that it is the least that can be asked to meet with my clients”. He complained he was confident his law firm would be “terminated in the circumstances” by MM&I if the meeting did not take place.

Mr Pettingill then approached Mr Dunch in December, copying in Mr Crockwell. He asked for a meeting to have a “general discussion with regards to gaming controls” which would not be aimed at securing a contract with the Government or an agreement with the commission.

He wrote: “Both myself and our clients are fully cognisant of the proposed legal structure and potential ramifications of anything that has the ‘appearance’ of any attempt to gain some form of advantage.

“I am confident, knowing me as you do, that this would not be your concern but, in any event, I assure you on behalf of our clients that this is simply not the case at all.”

Mr Dunch replied that he would discuss with his team, before forwarding the exchange to Mr Fahy with the words: “Didn’t waste any time, did he.”

2017

In March, Mr Pettingill, too, quit the OBA. In May, the gaming commission told MM&I that the history of Banyan’s predecessor company was “problematic” since it was previously forced to surrender its gaming licences in two major gambling jurisdictions in the United States.

The next day, Banyan representatives appeared at a PLP forum on gaming organised by Mr DeSilva, telling the audience that cashless gaming should be mandated by law. Mr Burt, who had become Opposition leader, gave opening remarks, describing Banyan’s principals as “esteemed” experts.

The next month, on June 8, Mr Dunkley called an election in order to head off a parliamentary vote of no confidence requested by Mr Burt, in which Mr Crockwell was expected to vote against the OBA and Mr Pettingill would have potentially cast the deciding vote.

Mr Crockwell was found dead at his home on June 10 and the OBA’s Patricia Gordon-Pamplin later raised questions in Parliament about a trip he was alleged to have been planning to the Four Seasons Hotel in New York with Mr Pettingill, Mr DeSilva and Mr Burt on June 12.

She described the men as an “unlikely quartet” planning to meet with “would-be gaming operators”. Little else has ever emerged about that alleged trip.

The Gazette’s special report was published in October and MM&I responded by saying, via Mr Pettingill, that it had planned to give away the majority of its profits to charity if it had won a deal to provide its cashless gaming system. Mr Dunch said that was the first he knew of it.

Mr Moniz has since died, Banyan Gaming no longer exists and Mr Pettingill, now an assistant justice, no longer represents MM&I.

He has previously stated that its cashless gaming system was a “sensible proposed initiative to ensure Bermuda was going to be fully compliant and avoid problem gaming and money-laundering issues which arise with cash systems”.

The former politician said recently: “It was always a valid concern for Bermuda that our jurisdiction could not have any casino operation that involved cash, which would be the biggest issue for monitoring problem gaming and enforcing our regulatory compliance regime in preventing money laundering and criminal activity.”

Mr Tartaglia said in 2018 that MM&I no longer had “any interest in participating in the gaming industry in Bermuda”.

In his recent statement, he said the Government had lost out on $250 million in casino tax from 2014 to date because it had not been able to get banks on board and get the sector up and running.

Mr Dunch has said he no longer wishes to comment on his tenure at the gaming commission.

• To view the Cabinet Office and tourism ministry disclosures made possible through Pati, see Related Media

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Tourism ministry 23-8-2018 disclosure on MM&I.pdf