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THE MALAYSIAN BILLIONAIRE. The biggest winner to date in Indian gaming is surely Lim Goh Tong, the 85-year-old Chinese-Malaysian businessman who bankrolled Foxwoods in northeastern Connecticut. Foxwoods, the country's largest gaming venue, is actually a constellation of five casinos about 10 miles down the road from the Mohegan Sun. On an average day, 40,000 people pass through what was a quiet, mostly rural patch of New England.
Lim knows how to compete for government favors. He earned his fortune as a contractor constructing huge infrastructure projects for the Malaysian government. In the mid-'60s while building a hydroelectric dam in the country's Cameron Highlands, he dreamed of developing a resort and casino in the area, which is easily accessible to Kuala Lumpur, the capital. Even though Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country and Islam forbids Muslims to gamble, he secured the government's approval in less than a day. In the more than three decades since, his exclusive agreement for what is still Malaysia's only casino has been a license to print money.
His deal in 1991 to underwrite the development of Foxwoods for the Mashantucket Pequots, a tribe of fewer than 200 members at the time, has proved similarly lucrative. While financial details have not been made public, one can estimate the tycoon's windfall. Lim provided two loans, one for $60 million, the other for $175 million. His company, Kien Huat Realty Ltd., will receive interest on the loans for years to come. But Lim really hit the jackpot with a clause that reportedly gives him 10% of Foxwoods' net income until 2018. Foxwoods' gross revenue is more than $1 billion a year. Assuming no downturn in the casino's fortunes, TIME estimates, Lim and his family will walk away with $1 billion over the life of the agreement. The U.S. tax bite? As a foreign investor, Lim will pay at a steeply discounted rate--below that levied on an American family earning less than $20,000 a year.
--THE GREAT LAND RUSH
When gambling was first proposed as a tool for Indian economic development, it was expected that casinos would be confined largely to rural reservations where impoverished tribes had lived for generations. But as with any transaction involving real estate, it's all about location, location, location. Casinos on reservations near urban areas, with a ready supply of would-be gamblers, have tended to do well. The more remote ones, not surprisingly, have foundered. The result: a mad scramble by tribes and their non-Indian financial partners to find prime real estate that they can claim as "reservation" land--and then build on it a gleaming new casino. The choicest spots are near big cities and along major highways. It doesn't matter if the tribes have ever lived there.
With the blessing of the BIA, these instant reservations are cropping up all over the country. The United Auburn Indian community's new reservation is in an industrial park in Roseville, Calif., just minutes from I-80, one of California's busiest highways. The heretofore landless Match-e-be-nash-she-wish Band--otherwise known as the Gun Lake Band of Potawatomi Indians--now has a reservation of 50 acres along busy U.S. 131 south of Grand Rapids, Mich. Further west, in Washington State, the BIA has set aside 56 acres along I-90 east of Seattle for the Snoqaulmie tribe to develop a casino.