On February 12, 2006, the London Sunday Times reported that Denis Sassou-Nguesso, the President of Congo-Brazzaville, another former French colony in central Africa, had spent more than three hundred thousand dollars on hotel rooms during a visit to New York for a U.N.

NEWYORKER: The Next Crusade

Adelson and his contractors were in court, there were hundreds of millions of dollars of liens on the hotel, and picketers were demonstrating on the Las Vegas Strip.

NEWYORKER: The Brass Ring

In 1989, Adelson bought the old Sands Hotel from Kerkorian for a hundred and twenty-eight million dollars, and established a new company, Las Vegas Sands.

NEWYORKER: The Brass Ring

Meanwhile, European businessmen were downstairs in the hotel lobby, plotting ways to profit off bountiful Libyan petro-dollars.

CNN: Libya seen through Gadhafi's keyhole

Many of the cases have involved hotel and restaurant workers who claimed they lost tens of thousands of dollars in wages when the spill ruined the 2010 Gulf Coast tourist season.

WSJ: BP Faults Deepwater Spill Claims Overseer

He has launched several more airlines, a mobile phone company (which he sold for well over a billion dollars), a cola, an entertainment content company, and a hotel group.

FORBES: Business & Management Lessons From Sir Richard Branson

"Maybe some 30 people were going to Italy but not us, " he says and starts brandishing dollars bills to show he has money and was not relying on any shadowy middleman to pay his hotel bill.

BBC: Sri Lanka - hub for human trafficking