Running a high-profile business which could get the king, the prime minister and half the population arrested if they became customers sounds like a crazy gamble.
But it paid off handsomely for Chinese immigrant Lim Goh Tong, who transformed a hillside into the powerhouse behind a billion-ringgit empire — with a little bit of help from other gamblers.
And Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad turned up last Friday to help Lim celebrate the latest milestone in an astonishing rags-to-riches story — despite the fact that the premier is barred from setting foot in the cash-pumping heart of the business.
A prominent sign on a discreet door in one of the five hotels clustered on a clearing in a primeval forest warns Muslims that they will be guilty of an offence under state religious laws if they step inside: it's the Casino de Genting.
But more than a quarter of Malaysia's 23 million population are Chinese, renowned for their love of gambling, and for them Malaysia's only casino has a siren's welcome.
Just across the border, in straight-laced casino-free Singapore, there are another few million Chinese, many itching to take a chance, just as Lim did 37 years ago.
My dream
The legendary billionaire, born in 1918 in China's Fujian province, who still is more fluent in his native Hokkien than in Malay and who speaks no English after a sketchy education, says on his website that it all began with a dream.
The dream that came to the immigrant sub-contractor working on a dam in the cool air of the Cameron Highlands resort in the centre of the country was of a small 38-room hotel on a hilltop closer to the steamy capital Kuala Lumpur.
The reality now is that Mahathir on Friday formally opened the first 3,300-room stage of what is claimed to be the world's biggest hotel, the First World.
When completed it will have 6,300 rooms, taking the total number in the five hotels on the hilltop close to 10,000.
The 12 million visitors a year who check in for a break at 2,000m above sea level are not all gamblers, for while the casino was quietly pumping the lifeblood into Lim's growing company, Genting Bhd, he developed what is now called a 'city of entertainment'.
There are indoor and outdoor 'theme parks', the latest of which is the First World Plaza offering a miniature Europe complete with Eiffel Tower and depressed-looking life-sized model gondoliers taking tourists endlessly around a fake Venetian canal.
Lim's company, incorporated in 1968 as he hacked the first road through the jungle to his hilltop, last year reported pre-tax profits of RM1.03 billion and is a key blue chip on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange.
The company has diversified into plantations, paper, oil and gas and power, transferring its gaming and resort-related operations to its subsidiary, Resorts World Bhd.
The Genting group also runs the world's fourth largest cruise line, Star Cruises, remaining faithful to its initial cash cow by offering floating casinos on board.
Influential partner
As Lim tells his story in 'My Dream' on the Genting website, when the government told him in 1969 that he would be allowed to operate a casino he immediately decided to upgrade his originally-planned 38-room Highlands Hotel to 200 rooms.
He describes meeting Macau's casino tycoon Stanley Ho, who "said I was the fastest man in the world to secure a casino licence".
Lim, whose first bumiputera partner was Mohd Noah Omar, father-in-law of two former prime ministers, expresses fulsome thanks to a series of Malaysian governments for their support in helping him realise his dream.
Like many dreams it has bizarre elements. Even the website of Genting Bhd warns visitors, in the sort of bold red letters used on pornographic sites, that if they are under 21 years old, or Muslims, they cannot enter the section devoted to the casino.— AFP