China jails Australian Crown staff for gambling related crimes
Three Australians, including Jason O’Connor, Crown’s head of international high-roller operations, have been jailed in China after pleading guilty to illegally promoting gambling.
O’Connor was handed a sentence of 10 months in jail while two other Australians, China-based Jerry Xuan and Pan Dan, were sentenced to nine months’ jail when they appeared in Shanghai’s Baoshan district court.
As they have already served eight months in a Shanghai jail, and their sentence includes time already served, they got off relatively lightly as they could have faced a maximum of three years under Chinese law.
And because the sentencing takes into account the time they have served in detention since October, they could be released within weeks.
“It’s a rap over the knuckles,’’ Vivienne Bath, a professor at University of Sydney specializing in Chinese law told Bloomberg. “To get away with nine or 10 months is not bad. They’re not handing out long sentences but their position is still clear.’’
All up, 19 current and former Crown employees pleaded guilty and 16 were fined a total of RMB8.62 million ($A1.67 million). O’Connor, Dan and Xuan were also fined the equivalent of $390,000, $78,000 and $39,000 respectively. Crown said it would pay the fine.
Of the 16 defendants who were fined, 11 were sentenced to 9 months jail and 5 were jailed for 10 months with time in detention being taken into account.
The remaining three defendants, who were out on bail, were not fined or sent to jail.
The verdicts have rattled billionaire James Packer’s gaming company as the Chinese government singled it out for courting customers from mainland China, where it’s illegal to gamble or promote gaming.
The Chinese government was in effect using Crown to send a warning to all overseas gaming companies.
“Crown remains respectful of the sovereign jurisdiction of the People’s Republic of China and does not intend to comment further at this time,” Crown said in its statement to the market.
by Leon Gettler, June 27th 2017
