Seneca Gaming ousts Snyder as chairman in surprise move

By Michael Beebe

News Staff Reporter

Barry E. Snyder Sr. was removed as chairman of the Seneca Gaming Corp. Friday by the gambling company’s board of directors.

Snyder, 68, was removed in a surprise vote by the board, which then elected Norman “Cochise” Redeye, a retired Erie County sheriff’s detective, to succeed him.

Snyder, who remains as president of the Seneca Nation of Indians, has served as chairman of the gambling operations since 2004.

Snyder is a millionaire who made his money selling tax-free cigarettes and gasoline, one of the first Senecas to do so. But his control of Seneca Gaming has turned controversial in recent years.

A planned $333 million Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino, which Seneca critics have dubbed too expensive, was temporarily halted in August, Snyder said, because of the downturn in the economy. Its steel superstructure, erected at a cost of $82 million, rusts alongside the temporary Buffalo casino.

The following month, FBI agents contacted Seneca officials and told them they had been the victim of an $880,000 crime in Seneca Gaming’s purchase of land for a championship golf course in Lewiston.

Snyder’s vice chairman on the gaming board, Bergal Mitchel III, was forced to resign for his role in the land scandal, though he has not been charged with a crime.

In November, Snyder forced out the highest-ranking Native American in Seneca Gaming, Barry W. Brandon, the company’s general counsel, who had helped bring casino gambling to the Senecas.

Brandon received nearly $600,000 in severance pay, which denied him the right to speak about why he left. But his friends and fellow workers at Seneca Gaming said Snyder forced him to leave.

And then in December, faced with declining revenues, Seneca Gaming laid off 210 employees, 5 percent of its work force.

The reason became clear by month’s end, when Seneca Gaming’s annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission reported a 13.9 percent drop in earnings.

The Buffalo News also has reported that under Snyder’s control, both as president of the nation and chairman of its gambling operations, those close to him have made millions of dollars on casino construction contracts.

The contracts come through a program called the Tribal Employment Rights Ordinance, or TERO, which gives companies with Seneca owners a preference on casino bidding.

But TERO developed into a program with most companies employing Senecas as little more than fronts, despite a requirement that they own at least 51 percent of the company.

Marie Williams, who lives with Snyder’s son, Scott, currently has 33 casino contracts worth $1.1 million, and previously had other contracts worth more than $4 million.

Williams submitted the third-highest bid for a food services contract for the casinos worth more than $30 million. Another company with a Seneca underbid her by $2 million, but Seneca Gaming has delayed awarding the contract for months.

Snyder was paid $100,000 a year as chairman of Seneca Gaming, and was provided a car and driver.

He got himself named to the board in 2004, after he had forced the resignation of the first Seneca Gaming president, G. Michael “Micky” Brown.

The two casino executives who replaced Brown, John Pasqualoni and Joseph D’Amato, later suddenly resigned. Brian Hansberry, who came to Seneca Gaming as a shift supervisor, is the current president and chief executive officer.

Redeye, 51, has been a member of Seneca Gaming’s board of directors since 2005.

A veteran of the U. S. Air Force, Redeye joined the Erie County Sheriff’s Office in 1981, and retired as a detective. He is a former tribal councillor and also served as a lay advocate for years in the Seneca Peacemaker’s Court.

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