Earlier today, the former cage boss at Crown Perth faced grilling at the state’s Royal Commission into the gambling giant over his responsibilities to monitor, recognise and report dodgy online transactions at the time.
David Brown occupied the position of general manager of cage and account at Crown Perth for 15 years, by September 2020. He took part in the September 28th hearing that was aimed at getting more evidence about a number of telegraphic payments into the Riverbank account of Crown Perth from 2013 to 2015. During his grilling at Western Australia’s Royal Commission, Mr Brown acknowledged that the online transactions in question looked suspicious and his department could have done more to sign and report them.
Allegedly, the payments represented cash deposits worth under AU$10,000, which is the threshold requiring obligatory checks to be held by the supervisors of the casino’s cage and account. As mentioned above, the payments were made into the casino giant’s Riverbank bank account that is believed to have been used for money laundering. Furthermore, Royal Commission heard that the payments were mostly overseas transactions.
The AU$10,000 threshold for gambling payments also requires a report to be filed at the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), which is the country’s financial crimes watchdog.
The inquiry into Crown Perth started in May. It was unveiled months after the NSW Commissioner Bergin issued a report over a similar probe into the Australian gambling giant’s operations, saying that the company was unsuitable to hold the operating licence for its new AU$2.2-billion Barangaroo casino in Sydney.
Former Cage Boss Acknowledges Failures to Act on Suspicious Transactions to Casino’s Riverbank Account
The questionable money deposits were executed at a number of bank branches before they were made into the Riverbank account of Crown Perth. This practice is popular as “cuckoo smurfing” and also “structuring” and is often associated with money laundering activities.
In 2014, the Riverbank account of the casino operator was closed by the ANZ bank because of structuring-related concerns. However, the Australian gambling giant later opened new bank accounts with the Commonwealth Bank – a move that practically allowed the alleged illegal activity to continue.
During the hearing at Western Australia’s Royal Commission, it became clear that Mr Brown raised concern over the payment into ANZ bank accounts during a conversation with Denise Vanderklau, the regulatory and compliance manager of Crown Perth. While he was interrogated by the Royal Commission, Mr Brown said he could not remember this particular conversation but acknowledged that the matter was addressed in an email sent by Ms Vanderklau.
Patricia Cahill, the senior counsel who is assisting the Commission, said she did not believe that Crown Perth’s former cage boss did not remember the conversation and asked him whether he finds the online activity in the Riverbank account suspicious. To this, Mr Brown answered that he would look at the issue now, as he finds it looks questionable.
The counsel assisting the Royal Commission further suggested that Mr Brown and his team failed to detect and report a number of online gambling payments into the Riverbank account that looked suspicious. She also asked him whether he was avoiding personal responsibility for the aforementioned failures associated with properly monitoring potentially suspicious payments and reporting the cases to the competent authorities.
Although Mr Brown claimed he was not the only one who had access to the information and could have initiated any action on the matter, he eventually acknowledged that as general manager of cage and account at the casino he was supposed to take enough measures to prevent the risk of money laundering from occurring through Crown Perth’s operations – something he failed to do.
- Author
Olivia Cole
