Three gaming executives at high-end Las Vegas properties — two of them women — were unanimously recommended for licensing Wednesday by the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
Jacqui Krum, executive vice president, general counsel and manager for Wynn Resorts Ltd.; Vladimira Mircheva, chief financial officer and executive vice president of Bally’s Corp.; and Carlos Castro, president, secretary and treasurer of Resorts World Las Vegas, were recommended in separate votes for licensing after suitability hearings.
Final licensing approval will be considered by the Nevada Gaming Commission at its March 26 meeting.
Castro was recommended for approval without an appearance. Regulators recently thoroughly reviewed Resorts World’s anti-money-laundering compliance plans when they licensed former Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and former Gaming Control Board Chairman A.G. Burnett as Resorts World board members in February. The property’s parent company was fined in 2025 for allowing gamblers with ties to illegal bookmaking play at the casino.
Board members praised Krum and Mircheva for their rapid ascents at their respective companies.
Krum will succeed Ellen Whittemore, a member of the Gaming Hall of Fame who retired last year after announcing her planned departure in September 2024. Originally from South Africa, Krum was Whittemore’s counterpart at Encore Boston Harbor and helped open that resort in June 2019.
Krum said in addition to moving to Las Vegas, she’ll make quarterly visits to the company’s properties in Macao and to Wynn Mayfair in London. The English casino was acquired in January 2025 to serve as a feeder market to the company’s $5.1 billion Wynn al Marjan project under construction in the United Arab Emirates, due to open in 2027.
Mircheva, who reports directly to Bally’s Chairman Soo Kim, told regulators she expects her biggest challenge to be keeping ahead of all of Bally’s pending projects across the country.
In addition to partnering with the Athletics to coordinate a project attached to the Major League Baseball stadium being built at Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard, Bally’s is working to open Chicago’s first-ever casino and has been selected for a license to build a casino resort in New York.
“We’re actively engaged in finding partners and working with our landlord” in Las Vegas, Mircheva said. “There’s obviously a capital commitment under an LOI (letter of intent) there, which has only partially been funded.”
The Bally’s Las Vegas project is expected to be developed in phases that eventually would include a 3,000-room hotel.
“Bally’s has announced a plan to develop a retail, entertainment and dining center that we think is going to be very attractive, given the fantastic location that we have and kind of where it sits on the Strip,” Mircheva said. “You know, we foresee one great opportunity for billboards and signage and advertising for various retailers, as well as an attractive shopping center that naturally is going to have a lot of foot traffic that will be driven by the A’s. We are looking at eventually potentially having the two hotel towers with 3,000 rooms and 500,000 square feet of retail, entertainment and dining space.”
The stadium is expected to be completed in time for the start of the 2028 baseball season.
Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.