Universal Ent sues Kazuo Okada

The company has sued the former chairman Kazuo Okada over claims of a contract breach.

Japan.- Japanese gaming firm Universal Entertainment Corp revealed that it has filed a US$890k suit in Tokyo District Court in Japan against former chairman and casino mogul Kazuo Okada. The reason of the legal action is the alleged failure of one of Okada’s private companies, Aruze Gaming America Inc (AGA), which makes casino slots machines and electronic table games, to pay patent licensing fees to Universal Ent.

The company announced the news before the Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation (Jasdaq) late last week and pointed out that the Nevada-based AGA “violated an agreement that it has executed with the Company to pay it patent licensing fees for Company-held patents by not paying said fees whatsoever,” and clarified that there’s no correlation between Universal Ent and AGA.

“The Company has verified that AGA has continued to use Company-held patents without permission, and that there is an extremely high possibility that it is manufacturing and selling products using those patents. The Company will proceed to examine legal action against this act by AGA of using Company-held patents without permission, including demanding an injunction to stop said manufacture and sales activities by AGA,” said the company on Friday.

This suit comes after the company accepted the results of the final report of the investigation that establishes that Okada is guilty of three fraudulent acts: the first happened between February and March 2015 when Okada instructed Tiger Resort Asia Limited to loan US$17 million with no interest to a company linked to him and his inner circle, and the funds were used for personal use. The report said that Okada didn’t ask for permission or consulted the Board of Directors before executing the loan. The second act happened in May 2015, in which he instructed a person in charge of the Tiger resort to check in US$2 million for personal use.