The beginning of the week saw Victorian gambling watchdog provide evidence to the Royal Commission into Crown Resorts that the gambling company management’s lied and intentionally delayed to launch an investigation into the arrests of the 19 China-based employees of the operator in 2016.
One of the investigators at the state’s gambling watchdog, Timothy Bryant, explained that the refusal of Crown Resorts to cooperate took it more time to find out the truth about the Australian casino giant’s failings to protect its staff members. As Casino Guardian reported at the time, 16 of them were put in jail over the allegations of illegal promotion of gambling on the territory of China. At the hearing, Mr Bryant said he believed that the company’s management had lied to him at times about what they had been and had not been aware of.
Currently, the Royal Commission into the gambling company’s operations in Victoria is set to assess whether Crown Melbourne is suitable to hold its operating licence in the state.
On the first day of public evidence at the Royal Commission in the state of Victoria, Adrian Finanzio, the counsel assisting the probe, said that Crown Resorts’ reform efforts before, during and since the company was found unfit to hold its Barangaroo casino licence are set to be examined by the Commission. Furthermore, the latter would also check whether the investigation held by Commissioner Bergin in New South Wales (NSW) really took into account the bigger picture of all the issues at the company’s casino in Melbourne.
Mr Finanzio SC explained that any evidence that the situation in Melbourne was more serious than Commissioner Bergin’s inquiry found may affect the final decision regarding the suitability of Crown Resorts to keep its casino licence.
WA’s Royal Commission Finds Evidence of Money Laundering at Crown Perth Casino
At the same time, another Royal Commission is evaluating the operations at Crown Perth. The investigative body in Western Australia revealed that the gaming regulator in the state decided to wait after the company itself provided it with information indicating that over 50 people may have been taken part in money laundering at Crown Perth.
According to evidence presented to the Royal Commission in Western Australia, the disclosures of Crown Resorts that its subsidiary Riverbank’s bank accounts may have been used by criminals to launder money was contained in an information pack filed to the state’s Gaming and Wagering Commission on December 14th, 2020.
A letter signed by the then-CEO of Crown Resorts, Ken Barton, with an annexure referring to some suspicious bank account activities has been among the documents presented to the Royal Commission. The annexure raised some concerns associated with transactions that are considered a form of money laundering, such as cuckoo smurfing and structuring, in which large money transactions are usually broken down into smaller chunks in order to make sure they will not be detected by regulators.
- Author
Daniel Williams
