Crown Resorts back in court to keep its $2.4BN Sydney Casino licence

The New South Wales Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority resumed hearings this week into whether Crown Resorts should keep its licence for its $2.4 billion casino in Sydney. 

In July 2019, Crown Resorts rejected claims of a failure to conduct adequate due diligence on junket partners accused of having links to drug traffickers, money launderers, human traffickers and organised crime groups.

Crown took out what proved to be an explosive newspaper advertisement to refute allegations it knew about money laundering conducted by said partners.

However, this week a Crown executive admitted its board could have been better informed about what its partners were up to, including public legal cases revealing money-laundering through its casinos.

A NSW government inquiry also heard some of Crown’s junket partners had been identified as alleged criminals or parts of triad gangs.

Melbourne financial adviser Roy Moo, is alleged to have an ‘arrangement’ with an organisation known only as ‘The Company’.

Moo allegedly laundered cash through Crown to Hong Kong. He was jailed in 2013, however after this time, The Australian reports “The Company began to rely on a new in-house junket known as The Hot Pot, named after a Macau hot pot restaurant chain, that was licensed by Crown”.

During the inquiry, Crown chief legal officer Joshua Preston was shown a series of legal judgments and media reports revealing damning information about the Resort’s partners. However Crown chief legal officer Joshua Preston maintained that Crown was not previously aware of links between Mr Moo, The Hot Pot and The Company following an internal investigation.

Asked by inquiry head, former Supreme Court justice Pat­ricia Bergin, if it “would have been helpful if the board had understood that Crown had had a series of, at least, cases where money laundering had occurred through its casino and that money had been linked to drug trafficking” before it released its rejection of these claims, Preston said, “Given what I have now seen recently, having that information at hand would have been definitely relevant.”

Mr Preston is responsible for legal and regulatory compliance at the James Packer-backed casino giant, but had no answer as to why Crown had not investigated these matters when media brought them to light. He did, however, admit he could have taken a more proactive approach.

In his defence, Mr Preston revealed he had asked Crown’s anti-money-laundering team to check for any reference to “The Company” in its database and raised the allegations relating to The Company with Crown’s Australian Resorts chief Barry Felsted and other members of the group’s legal team.

No reference to The Company was found.