Steven Wynn the Las Vegas casino mogul routinely subjected women who were employed by him to unwanted sexual advances detailed dozens of present and past employees, said a report on Friday in the Wall Street Journal. However, the billionaire casino mogul has denied those accusations calling them preposterous.
Following the release of the report in the WSJ, the Wynn Resorts Ltd board of directors said it met and formed a committee that consisted of only independent directors that would investigate the allegations in the article published Friday. Wynn founded Wynn Resorts and is the CEO and chairman.
The announcement by the board of an investigation followed a fall in the Wynn Resorts stock of over 10.1% after the publication of the story in the WSJ.
Earlier on Friday, the company appeared as if it sided with Wynn in dismissing the article, saying through a statement that the article reflected the allegations of Elaine Wynn, his ex-wife, in litigation she filed against him and his company.
The WSJ said current and former company employees interviewed by the Journal accused Wynn of creating a working environment hostile for women and of pressuring employees regularly to take part in sex acts.
This report on Friday is just the latest in a series of sexual harassment and abuse allegations that have been leveled against men in powerful positions during the last year, especially in the entertainment and media industries as well as politics.
Wynn has worked both worlds, as a prominent casino resort business figure and a rival at one time of Donald Trump. After Trump became U.S. president, Wynn was named as the finance chairman for the Republican National Committee.
The article on Friday said that former Wynn Resorts workers spoke of employees making phony entries to their appointment books in attempts to help other female workers avoid requests for services from Wynn’s office, or helped to arrange for others to act as their assistants so they were not alone with Wynn.
Others, said the Journal, remembered female workers hiding in bathrooms or in a backrooms when word was out he was heading to a hotel salon.
The article also said that a settlement of 7.5 million was paid by Wynn to a former manicurist at the Wynn resort in Las Vegas who accused Wynn of forcing her to have sex with him in 2005 while in his office.
