Pansy Ho strides in spiked heels and Dolce & Gabbana tweeds between piles of construction rubble and pools of rainbow-hued generator sludge, paying little attention to the frenetic retinue orbiting her.

To her left, a stylist fusses at her cheeks with a large brush and powder pad. To her right, another young woman shields Pansy's bobbed black hair with outstretched palms in an ineffectual attempt to block the fierce winds blowing in from the South China Sea. A personal assistant nervously trots in front holding a bottle of Evian, from which she tries to direct a straw into Pansy's mouth without smudging Pansy's lip gloss. At the rear comes a phalanx of yet more assistants, public relations advisers, and security guards taking orders from a broad-chested, 6-foot-6 Gurkha. (View slideshow)

A dozen helmeted heads belonging to a crew of construction workers swivel to watch Pansy pass, and for a moment, the jackhammers fall silent. This petite 45-year-old, deftly skirting the muck in what will become a valet-parking drop-off, not only runs this mammoth construction project but is also a celebrity in her native Macao. As abruptly as Pansy's entrance halts work, however, the crew collectively remembers that the imposing glass-and-steel casino complex it is rushing to complete on time belongs to her, and the cacophony strikes up once again. The workers are putting the finishing touches on the MGM Grand Macau, a $1.2 billion casino and luxury hotel, built and run as a fifty-fifty joint venture between Pansy Ho and MGM Mirage.

Pansy's entourage, meanwhile, is here to touch up something equally important: her corporate image. Although Pansy and her family provide regular fodder for local gossip columns, they are secretive about their business and have rarely spoken at length to the Western media. But now, when the future of one of Asia's richest industrial dynasties may hang on a partnership with a U.S. company, she is being carefully stage-managed for an overseas audience. At an event for the local press a few days earlier, she turned up in sweatpants, with just one attendant.

The MGM deal "is the ultimate break for me," she says over the roar of a concrete drill. "It is very important for the American people to know who I am."

Pansy Ho must negotiate far greater obstacles than those on the construction site of this gold-painted tower. With 600 hotel rooms, 99 suites, 16 V.I.P. rooms, and a sunken gaming floor the size of a soccer field, the MGM Grand Macau represents a high-stakes gamble for Pansy, the heir apparent to a corporate empire. Her father, octogenarian billionaire Stanley Ho, founded a clutch of real estate, gambling, tourism, and transportation companies and created Macao's booming casino industry almost single-handedly. But law-enforcement officials in North America and Europe have long contended that he cemented his power by cooperating with triads, cutthroat gangs that use Macao's casinos to ply their loan-sharking trade, launder dirty money, and supply prostitutes and drugs to wealthy businessmen.

Stanley Ho has never been charged with a crime. However, a 2007 State Department narcotics and law-enforcement report noted links between his casinos and Chinese triads. The U.S. government's 2000 International Crime Threat Assessment described him as "a reputed organized-crime figure." And in 1990, a special investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police designated Stanley a triad and even went so far as to assign him a so-called gang number in a report about his alleged illegal activities. Stanley, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has denied that he was ever a triad. He has acknowledged that a criminal element is attracted to his casinos but has said that he does his best to keep it at bay.

The taint of organized crime has until now barred Stanley from his ultimate prize: partnership with one of the U.S. gambling giants that are scrambling for dominance in Macao. In recent years, after the Chinese government reclaimed Macao and Hong Kong and invited foreign companies to take a slice of the pie, the Ho family has lost its virtual monopoly of the Macao casino business and has been struggling to redefine its commercial future. Because the aging, smoke-filled dens that made Stanley rich were having trouble competing with the island's glamorous new casinos, he sought a U.S. company that could help him build an impressive contemporary flagship. As a holder of one of a handful of precious casino licenses granted by the Macao authorities, he approached MGM about a possible joint venture in 2002.

MGM Mirage, which is majority owned by billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian, couldn't afford to ignore Stanley's advances. Wynn Resorts and Las Vegas Sands had already struck agreements with two Macao license holders, and Stanley held one of the few remaining licenses.

But MGM and Stanley soon realized that his alleged triad ties would be an insurmountable bar with U.S. regulators. Nevada and New Jersey gambling authorities have the power to shut down casinos in their states if they find that the operators are involved with organized-crime figures anywhere in the world. Nevada derailed the deal with Stanley even before it was formally proposed, according to Pansy. MGM contends that it didn't negotiate with her father but acknowledges having discussed a joint venture with Hong Kong-based Shun Tak Holdings, which Stanley chairs.

So Stanley took advantage of a Macao legal loophole to create a so-called subconcession in the name of his daughter and protégée, Pansy—making her the official gambling-license holder and MGM's partner. Decades of allegations and investigations by numerous governments may have sullied his reputation, but Pansy was effectively clean, having never been named in any of the government or regulatory reports that accuse her father of ties to organized crime.

After Stanley gave her the subconcession, Pansy took over the MGM project in 2004. She negotiated with MGM for two years, frequently visiting its headquarters in Las Vegas to hash out problems face-to-face with chief executive Terry Lanni.

Lanni's participation underscores the importance of the deal to MGM, which operates 17 properties, including the high-end Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, and Luxor in Las Vegas. MGM is the world's second-largest gaming company, after Harrah's. But it has lagged behind rivals like Sands and Wynn in betting on Macao. The gaming industry on this sliver of an island, a former Portuguese colony with a population of about 530,000, is expected to become the biggest and most lucrative in the world. About 2.2 billion people live within five hours' flying time of Macao; some 22 million of them make the trip each year, and the numbers keep rising. Macao, which is a special administrative region of China, just like nearby Hong Kong, is the only place in China where gambling is legal. It has annual gaming revenue of about $8 billion, $1 billion more than Las Vegas and $3 billion more than Atlantic City. Many industry analysts predict the island will soon overtake the entire state of Nevada, which had $12 billion in gaming revenue last year.

By contrast, commercial-gambling growth may be topping out in the U.S. Revenue fell about 10 percent in New Jersey last year, the first decline since gambling was legalized in Atlantic City 30 years ago. MGM believes in the "development and growth of the Macao market," a spokesperson says. Without a presence in Macao, the spokesperson adds, the company's "ability to attract new high-end customers to Nevada would be compromised."

To deny approval, Nevada gaming authorities merely had to prove that Pansy had a close business relationship with her father—which is no secret—and that there was a strong possibility he might at some point become involved in her affairs with MGM. Nevertheless, after a two-year inquiry, Nevada approved the joint venture in February 2007. Several senior Nevada investigators who had argued against the deal were angry when their advice wasn't followed, and one was on the verge of resigning, according to a person with knowledge of the probe. Frank Schreck, a leading gaming lawyer and former member of the Nevada Gaming Commission, says that MGM is "very highly respected" in Nevada and its role as Pansy's partner "went a long way to ironing out any problems she may have faced" with gaming regulators.

MGM officials give Pansy credit. They say her flexibility in negotiating the ownership and management structure of the MGM casino enabled the partnership to succeed. Acknowledging that it would have been difficult to do business with Stanley, given his reputation, the MGM spokesperson says that Pansy "impressed us as a strong, experienced, talented, trustworthy, and independent individual."

New Jersey authorities are now examining the deal closely. Pansy, who is managing director of the family's holding company, second in command to her father, must convince them that she's acting independently. In a strange twist, her best chance of preserving her father's legacy is to prove that her future as a casino magnate does not include him.

Once inside the shell of the new casino, Pansy perches on the edge of an oversize love seat that's situated in a cocktail bar decked out with Ian Schrager-inspired decor. She chooses her words with an eye to the New Jersey officials half a world away, declaring that she won't be her father's stand-in but his rival in the casino business. When the MGM deal is approved, "we will have to go into competition with my father's operations," she says, adding that although she is an executive at Shun Tak Holdings, the company run by her father, her relationship with MGM is entirely separate. As a public company, she adds, Shun Tak has nonexecutive directors and official procedures that protect against conflicts of interest.

The regulators aren't Pansy's only worry. A battle of succession is reportedly playing out in the family, with Pansy's aunt Winnie Ho and Angela Leung, Pansy's ballroom-dancing stepmother, each vying with Pansy for control of Stanley's corporate empire after he dies. Winnie is suing Stanley, her brother, in Macao's high court, alleging that he called her cheap and despicable and that he's trying to force her to sell her 7.3 percent stake in the casino business to Pansy for a pittance. Winnie reportedly wants to shift ownership of her shares to a company she owns to ensure that her son inherits a piece of the gaming business. Leung, the stepmother, is just two years older than Pansy and is a major shareholder in Stanley's casino business. Winnie declined to comment, and Leung couldn't be reached.

Pansy denies that there is any succession dispute in the Ho family. "I don't think actually that was ever a subject that was thoroughly discussed," she says. "In a Chinese family, in fact, you know, the elderly person is still very much involved and, in fact, still at the helm of the business." Nonetheless, she has a frosty relationship with Leung. One of her few disagreements with her father is her refusal to acknowledge Leung as his wife, choosing instead to call her Stanley's "close companion."

 

Pansy Catilina Ho Chiu King has always been a favorite of her father's; he closely guided her education and career and fostered her ascent to the top of the family business. One of 17 children that Stanley claims as his own, Pansy says that when she was growing up in Hong Kong, she often accompanied her father on trips into the nearby mountains to hunt partridges and wild ducks. "I was the brave one of the family who would go with him, and we would climb mountains and trek through the wilderness for hours together," she recalls. Despite their close relationship, she never refers to him in an interview as "Dad," or even "my father," but instead chooses the honorific title "Dr. Ho."

Her mother, Lucina Lam, was the second of Stanley's four wives. She bore him five children, of whom Pansy is the eldest. "My mother used to make me accountable to look after my siblings," she says. "I was the babysitter, and so it has always been." Lam, who now splits her time between homes in Hong Kong and Toronto, collects antiques and artifacts, often bought at auctions that she and Pansy attend together.

According to Pansy, her parents never divorced and remain close. She disputes reports that her father also has an illegitimate son by a Hong Kong pop star named Ling Ling. "He has 17 children with four different wives. Why would he deny having a son by another woman?" she asks.

Like many other rising Hong Kong businessmen, Stanley sent his children to U.S. educational institutions. Pansy attended grades 11 and 12 at Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California, one of the West Coast's premier private schools for girls. She had an unremarkable academic record but participated in a variety of extra-curricular activities, including the debate team, the choir, and theater. "We would put on a school production every year. The one I really remember enjoying was The Tempest," says Pansy, who graduated in 1980.

Stanley is said to have made large donations to Castilleja. Through a spokesperson, the headmistress says the school has received donations from Pansy and two sisters who also attended, but she declines to comment about contributions from Stanley.

On her father's advice, Pansy studied marketing and international business management at Santa Clara University, a Jesuit college in Silicon Valley. After her graduation, Stanley helped finance the startup of Occasions, a Hong Kong P.R. and high-end party-planning firm, which she ran successfully, earning the nickname Party Girl Pansy from the local press. She dined frequently at Dragon-i, a jet-set Hong Kong nightclub, and was a regular at the infamous, members-only Kee Club. After the breakup of her nine-year marriage to Julian Hui Chun Hang, the son of a Hong Kong shipping and property tycoon, in 2000, she was often photographed leaving Pink Mao Mao, a karaoke lounge and disco that was frequently raided by police. Gossip columns in Hong Kong played up her friendships with local celebrities like former Bond girl and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon star Michelle Yeoh. Though Pansy left Occasions in 1995 and joined Shun Tak as a director, her socialite image has persisted.

A quarter-mile inland from the looming edifice of Pansy's Grand Macau, neon lights twinkle atop a cartoonish minaret-like structure that's supposed to be a lotus blossom. More lights flash, alternating to spell out L-I-S-B-O-A, in a display of kitsch reminiscent of the old Las Vegas Strip. The Lisboa is the flagship of Stanley Ho's once-unrivaled casino empire. Today, the Lisboa is dwarfed by Macao palaces like Steve Wynn's eponymous resort, Sheldon Adelson's Venetian Macao, and the MGM Grand Macau. But Pansy must go much farther from her father's side than the few blocks that separate the Lisboa from the Grand Macau.

To Pansy and other loyalists, Stanley is the consummate entrepreneur who, in his younger days, fought off pirates on the high seas (if the family stories are to be believed) as he built a small supply business into the $7 billion personal fortune he has today. But to law-enforcement and gaming officials in Europe and North America, he's a pariah linked to some of the most violent criminals on earth.

He was born in 1921 into one of Hong Kong's wealthiest and most prominent families. His grandfather, who was of Chinese and European descent, was a comprador, or go-between, for Jardine Matheson, the British trading house that once dominated the colony's financial, maritime, and opium trades. His father had served in a similar position for the powerful Sassoon trading house.

When Stanley was a teenager, his father lost everything and fled to Vietnam, leaving the family destitute. At the age of 20, when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong, Stanley retreated to Macao and made the beginnings of his vast fortune by trading goods for food with the occupier. He has said that he did so to feed his starving compatriots, but no one benefited from the arrangement as much as he did.

In the early 1960s, when Pansy was a baby, Stanley set up the Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macao with a small group of investors, including a gangster named Yip Hon, who helped establish and run S.T.D.M.—an enormously lucrative casino monopoly—for decades. Under the mantle of his Shun Tak Holdings conglomerate, which operates most of the family businesses other than casinos, Stanley established a fast ferry between Hong Kong and Macao. Shun Tak has since developed hotels, a shopping center, and a Space Needle-like tower that houses the island's convention center. In the 1980s, when China's economic reforms were creating a new wealthy class, the Hos' gambling business really took off—and so did organized crime. Stanley's casinos became a magnet for high rollers from the mainland, who played in dark and smoky V.I.P. rooms reportedly controlled by triads.

Stanley likes to brag that he has been photographed with Queen Elizabeth II, the elder George Bush, and Bill Clinton. He has also hobnobbed with more notorious heads of state. In 1999, he opened a casino in Pyongyang, North Korea, and was quoted in the Hong Kong press in 2003 as saying that he carried an offer of asylum from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il to Saddam Hussein shortly before the Iraqi president was toppled. He has also showered the Communist government in Beijing with ostentatious gifts, including an $8.9 million Qing-dynasty bronze sculpture.

Those who do business with Stanley or his family risk being tarnished by association. Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, learned that lesson in November, when news emerged that his Giuliani Partners had been engaged to provide security consulting for a consortium that was planning to build a casino resort in Singapore. One of the consortium's three member companies was partly owned by Lawrence Ho, Stanley's son. The link to the Ho family drew criticism, prompting Giuliani Partners to respond that Stanley had no involvement in the casino bid.

As a result of investigations into his organized-crime ties, Stanley has been forced to forgo casino-development plans in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Singapore, and, most recently, Britain. Last year, he gave about $5 million to endow a lectureship in Chinese history at Oxford University, a move interpreted by many as a precursor to an application for a British casino license. But a senior gaming official in Britain, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was unlikely that Stanley Ho or a family member would ever receive such a license.

Recently, the Macao government awarded a much-coveted ferry license to Las Vegas Sands without even inviting a bid from the ferry's longtime operator, Shun Tak. Stanley sued to block the license, saying that he had been blackballed, but his lawsuit was dismissed in January. The family has also been denied permission to develop the land adjacent to the Shun Tak Center, a move perceived as another kick in the teeth.

Pansy says the allegations about her father's triad connections used to upset her, but today she's hardened to what she calls innuendo. "It is very difficult. These people who say these things do not live in this part of the world, and so they do not know how this society works. But it does not stop us living our lives," she says.

Soon after Pansy joined Shun Tak Holdings in 1995, when she was in her early thirties, she negotiated a $300 million merger with a Hong Kong-based ferry operator. The deal saved Shun Tak's ferry business. Around the same time, she was also given responsibility for Shun Tak's Macao Tower and Convention and Entertainment Center. With salesmanship and crowd-drawing skills honed during her days as a party planner for Hong Kong's version of the Brat Pack, she quickly breathed life into the concrete complex that many had dismissed as a white elephant. Today, it's almost impossible to get a table for dinner at 360 Café, the restaurant atop the tower, and business at the convention center is booming.

"She is tenacious," a longtime observer says. "She has been written off many times. Nobody thought she would pull off the ferry merger, yet she did. Everybody thought the tower would fail, yet here it stands. Pansy is well connected and very well disciplined. She has the ability to stick with a project until it is done."

Today, Pansy runs most of Shun Tak's biggest operations. According to the latest annual report, Pansy owns 17 percent of the company, which at recent share prices is worth about $500 million. Her father controls 20 percent. She's also on the board of S.T.D.M., the privately held company that owns the family's casinos. Colleagues and associates at Shun Tak say she's a hands-on executive, working long days and nights at the office. Former staff members describe her as a ruthless, short-tempered boss who shouts at subordinates. All agree that she's determined to overcome her party-girl image and become known as an international businesswoman and patron of the arts.

Of Pansy's four full siblings, three work in the family business: sisters Daisy and Maisy and brother Lawrence. Lawrence also holds a license in a Macao casino joint venture with Australian James Packer. Packer's late father, Kerry, had once talked about opening a casino with Stanley in Australia, but the idea was dropped after regulators showed interest in Stanley's ties to organized crime. The other sibling is Josie Ho, an actress and pop star in Hong Kong. Josie has appeared in more than 30 films, including The Drummer, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

While Daisy, Maisy, and Lawrence each exert some control over a portion of the Ho empire, Pansy, as the eldest sibling, is highest in the corporate pecking order. "There is an established sense of hierarchy that was instilled in us by my mother at a very young age," she says.

Pansy holds more than 100 directorships and board positions. Taking advantage of her spot on the international board of Sotheby's, she aims to bring a major art auction to the Grand Macau. "I love art, and I love the more beautiful side of things," she says. "And maybe because I am a woman, there is a great deal of sensitivity and femininity that goes into the program."

Sensitivity and femininity aren't often associated with Stanley's casinos—particularly in the smoky chambers known as V.I.P. rooms. When Stanley set up his casino monopoly in Macao in the 1960s, he needed a way to attract high rollers from mainland China. So he invented the V.I.P. room.

These exclusive dens are more than just a simple collection of high-stakes tables within a casino. They have a byzantine operating structure and are controlled by third parties known as V.I.P.-room operators, who, in turn, hand over the day-to-day running of affairs to junkets, agents who find wealthy gamblers to play in the rooms. Used in this sense, the word junket is derived from the Chinese jin-ke, which means "introducing customers."

Macao's V.I.P. rooms look and feel like the type of place where James Bond might lose a few million pounds from Her Majesty's Treasury. They're almost silent, save for the click-clack of chips being rattled in a stack or the bounce of an ivory ball on a roulette wheel and the occasional utterance of "Les jeux sont faits" by the croupier. There are no slot machines or tourists in T-shirts. Instead, at any time of day or night, beautiful young Asian and European women hover around the players. They are called marketing girls, but according to a former Hong Kong vice squad officer familiar with Macao, many of these women are prostitutes.

Even hotel guests cannot just walk into a V.I.P. room. They must be invited by a junket, who takes their money and exchanges it for dead chips, which are issued by the casino and sold to the junket for slightly less than the face value of the chip. The patrons play with these chips in the V.I.P. room and either win real chips, which they can cash in, or lose everything. The system guarantees a certain level of play: Once the dead chips are bought, they may never be exchanged for cash or real chips, except by winning at the gaming table.

It is not unusual for an individual to spend $5 million or $6 million a night at a V.I.P.-room table. In recent years, V.I.P. rooms have accounted for as much as 77 percent of all gambling revenue in Macao. In 2006, the most recent year for which figures are available, the number was 59 percent.

But the V.I.P. rooms have a darker side—one that New Jersey regulators are closely scrutinizing in connection with the MGM-Pansy deal, according to people familiar with the investigation. High rollers launder money there. They also evade taxes by placing side bets with the junket. When the stakes are high enough, gamblers inevitably borrow large sums of money, and those who lose accrue debts. So it is no surprise that the junket's repertoire also includes loan-sharking and debt collecting.

In the 1990s, when Stanley still enjoyed a monopoly, rival triad factions fought in the streets for control of the V.I.P. rooms. The violence peaked in 1999, when the Portuguese left the island and triad groups battled to hold onto their turf. Manuel Joaquim das Neves, director of Macao's Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, is coy when questioned about organized crime in the island's V.I.P. rooms. "Is it organized crime, or is it just crime?" he asks. "Where is free of crime? I think nowhere."

Pansy expects to take the stand soon at a hearing before the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to face questions about her past and the alleged links between her father and the triads. No one in her family has ever been cross-examined on these topics. "There is still a chance that at the hearing they are still going to find me somebody that's not suitable as a partner for MGM," she says.

The commission has occasionally denied licenses to applicants whom it deems unsuitable. In 1979, New Jersey refused to grant a full license to Caesars Palace until chief executive Cliff Perlman, who allegedly had Mob connections, was ousted. Perlman left in 1981, and Caesars received the license. In 1985, Barron Hilton, head of the global hotel chain that bears his surname, was denied a license to operate a casino in Atlantic City because he did business with California lawyer Sidney Korshak, a reputed fixer for the Mob. After six years of lobbying, the Hiltons won a license in 1991. In December, Columbia Sussex was forced to put its Tropicana Atlantic City up for sale after New Jersey authorities refused to renew its license, citing poor customer service and a failure to create an independent audit committee.

MGM is in the development stages of a $5 billion, 72-acre hotel-and-casino complex in Atlantic City but has made no actual financial commitment—a move some see as an effort to impress upon the commission what New Jersey might sacrifice if MGM leaves the state. For now, however, MGM has a joint venture in Atlantic City, which, Pansy believes, it would consider withdrawing from if forced to choose between it and her new tower in Macao.

The MGM spokesperson declined to comment about that possibility, saying the company had "seen similar speculation from Wall Street analysts" but that company leaders "firmly believe that the New Jersey decision will be favorable." MGM is already planning to build another casino with Pansy on Macao's Cotai Strip, less than a mile from the Grand Macau.

The New Jersey commission is in a no-win situation. If it disagrees with Nevada and denies the license, the U.S. regulatory framework for gaming could be thrown into confusion. If it grants the license, Schreck, the gaming lawyer, says, it will face widespread criticism for giving the Ho family an entrée into the U.S. casino industry. "This is why this investigation is so crucial and why it is taking so long."

It's also taking so long because New Jersey investigators are plowing through a mountain of documents provided by an unexpected source. The Family Focus Coalition, a little-known U.S. evangelical group that opposes gambling, posted a voluminous dossier about the Ho family on the internet last year. The information on the website delves into not only Stanley's triad links but also Pansy's personal life. The records detail her divorce from Julian Hui, who is also alleged to have triad links, as well as her relationship with ex-boyfriend Gilbert Yeung, a wealthy playboy whose father is alleged to have been a senior figure in the Sun Yee On triad gang. Sources at the U.S. Department of Justice and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police verified the authenticity of many documents.

The Family Focus Coalition's founder, upstate New York pastor Gary Kellner, says he went into hiding after posting the dossier and fears reprisals, though he won't say from whom. He would not talk on the phone and only answers questions in sporadic emails. He says he's been subjected to a "constant campaign of harassment, including hate mail and death threats."

Kellner says a whistleblower whom he won't identify supplied the dossier. Pansy believes that one of her many competitors may have provided it, hoping to sabotage the deal. Its exposure of her personal life was one of the most painful parts of the joint venture. "I am not accustomed to this whole process," she says, adding, "We are going to be able to prove there is nothing to be concerned about the way we conduct business."

Pansy promises to keep the criminal element out of her V.I.P. rooms and, indeed, out of her casino. "We go through a very stringent check and review before we approve any V.I.P.-room operators," she says.

As Pansy stands to leave the cocktail lounge, one of the only completed areas of the Grand Macau, the bottle of Evian is presented before her lips once more, and Pansy takes a sip. "This is room temperature. We do not have cold?" she asks a terrified minion as the entourage begins to whirl about her once more. The great glass doors swing open, and off she marches, through the dust and dirt of the construction site. And in the midst of all this mess and chaos—the workmen digging, sawing, grinding, and sweeping—it appears that she alone remains spotless.