A hearing at a Nevada court is to start today on whether or not Las Vegas Sands Corp should face any sanction for not disclosing the location of a computer hard drive sought as evidence by former Sands China Ltd chief executive Steven Jacobs. Las Vegas Sands is the parent company of Macau-based gaming operator Sands China Ltd. The hearing is scheduled for three days, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. According to a news report from U.S.-based ProPublica.org, the hard drive was plugged into one of Mr Jacobs’ office computers in Macau, and was moved to Las Vegas a few days after he was fired, in July 2010. Mr Jacobs had requested access to the hard drive in connection to the lawsuit in which he is arguing he was wrongfully fired in July 2010. Las Vegas Sands had said it could not turn over the disk because it was in Macau and it would be against local rules to send it to the U.S. without proper authorisation; but actually, the disk was already in the United States. Only in June this year did Sands China acknowledged the situation, saying the hard disk transfer was done “in error”. The Macau Office for Personal Data Protection says it never authorised Sands China to transfer any files to the United States. The office said in July it had started an investigation into the issue to see if Sands had breached any local laws.
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