The inquiry held by the Australian integrity commission has found that the high-roller customers of Crown Resorts, including individuals who had initially been rejected permission to enter the country on character grounds, have been given preferential visa treatment by the Home Affairs.
According to the probe held by the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, the officials responsible for the checks of Crown Resorts’ VIP customers were found to have been keeping a poor record of these clients, noting that some of these individuals may have escaped thorough baggage checks.
No findings of corruption were made in the report, but ACLEI also revealed that one of the border force officers who used to work as a bodyguard for Tom “Mr Chinatown” Zhou stepped down from his government role in January 2020 after being questioned about his conduct. Ton Zhou, who was taken into custody overseas and extradited to China, operated a junket agency for the Australian gambling giant.
According to the report, which was released by the ACLEI earlier this week, the now-former border force officer had not received approval from the ABF for getting secondary employment with the junket operator. The probe found that he worked for the junket operator as a bodyguard, but he should have known that this position could have ended up creating a conflict of interest.
Investigation Also Finds Inadequate Record-Keeping but No Evidence of Corruption at Crown Resorts
The extensive relationship between Crown Resorts and Mr Zhou was unveiled last year in an investigation by The Sydney Morning Herald, 60 Minutes and The Age, with the three media outlets alleging Crown had been having connections to organised crime as part of the gambling giant’s high-roller program. Apart from that, the reports also revealed that the ABF officer’s relationship with Mr Zhou and triggered both the inquiry held by the ACLEI and an ongoing public probe that is set to check whether Crown Resorts is suitable to hold a casino licence in the state of New South Wales (NSW).
As it was made clear by the inquiry report issued by the ACLEI, the organisation only has the power to take actions when it has proof of corruption, rather than issues of poor administration management associated with a border security breach. Corruption does not equal administrative deficiencies, even when it comes to poor or lax governance that has ended up creating a corruption vulnerability.
The ACLEI report has confirmed that Crown Resorts had an arrangement with border force under which its visa applications became subject to less strict rules, so some visa applications supported by the Australian gambling giant were given favourable outcomes due to the support received by Crown Resorts.
The gambling company was found to have supported 79 visa applications that were refused by immigration authorities or were withdrawn by Crown Resorts because of concerns they would be rejected. A total of 21 of these applications ended up with issued visas at a later stage. Apart from that, the investigation held by the ACLEI revealed some notes attached to three visa cases that proved how the gambling giant had sought to guarantee the integrity of suspect visa applicants.
As mentioned above, no evidence of corruption was found by the ACLEI, but the latter had identified several administrative concerns. They had not necessarily led to corrupt conduct, however, the investigators explained. Crown Resorts was also scolded for the inadequate record-keeping of its officials, who had been responsible for checking high-roller customers at the time the latter entered the country on Crown junket operators’ private jets.
So far, two private hearings were conducted by the ACLEI’s investigators, involving interviews under oath. One more interview was also held, and while the probe was carried out, investigators reviewed a large number of Home Affairs documents.
- Author
Olivia Cole
