King Tāufa’āhau was cursed with an uncanny knack of making bad friends. These dubious people often brought more doubtful characters along with them. It damaged the royal family and the kingdom. William (Bill) Stanley Waterhouse (1922-2019), Australia's biggest bookmaker (perhaps in the world, at the time), was among the first. While still a prince, the two, four years apart in age, met at Sydney University. Waterhouse was immensely wealthy, and presumably shared some of that with his new best friend. Tāufa’āhau rewarded Waterhouse by naming him Tonga’s honorary consul in Australia. Waterhouse became a strangely dangerous figure to Tonga, and after he died, it emerged that Waterhouse used the Tongan connections for crime and perhaps murder. Waterhouse was not the only strange choice as honorary consul. Tonga’s honorary in Tokyo was war crimes suspect and gambling billionaire Ryoichi Sasakawa. This chapter focuses on an American Waterhouse met in Las Vegas in 1970, John Meier. Waterhouse was trying to break into the casino world and had gone to the United States to check out the casinos set up by Howard Hughes (1905-1976). Meier was a close lieutenant of billionaire recluse. In 1977, a year after Hughes’ death, Waterhouse introduced Meier to King Tāufa’āhau.
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