Crown Resorts Agrees to Pay $293 million Fine
Following a lengthy legal battle with the Australian gaming regulator (AUSTRAC), Crown Resorts has accepted its fate and will pay a fine of $293 million. The multi hundreds of millions of dollars being demanded by AUSTRAC is due to a string of regulatory violations committed by Crown Resorts, specifically related to money-laundering and counter-terrorism in Melbourne and Perth.
The Melbourne outpost for Crown Resorts continues to operate despite the financial hits taken by the company over the past three years. Under new management, this venue remains core to the long-term success of the business. ©torcasiojohn/Pixabay
Crown Resorts has been embattled in a slew of scandals and mismanagement since James Packer’s downfall in 2020. The casino group has been fighting for survival as regulators and law enforcement across Australia have been seeking their pound of flesh. This latest announcement comes following the conclusion of a court case, and pending the final approval of the Federal Court.
At the root of the problems for Crown Resorts appears to have been a systemic failure to adequately control the financial risk surface at the casino. The facilities and structures in place at Crown did in fact enable organized criminals, and terrorist groups, to efficiently wash their ill-gotten gains through the casino without any recourse. Of course, Crown Resorts was able to profit handsomely from turning a blind eye to this dirty cash, an infringement that comes with legal consequences.
It’s been widely reported the extent and lengths that Crown Resorts executives went to in order to keep the money flowing through their accounts. In all but a few cases, Crown’s management back in the mid-2010s were complicit in the money-laundering, allowing shady cash deposit mechanisms to operate unimpeded, and even erecting secret deposit windows at the casino so large sums of cash could be deposited beyond the eye’s of cameras and regulators.
New Beginnings for Crown Resorts
The historic failings at Crown Resorts are widely considered to be an unacceptable chapter of Australia’s biggest casino brand. Crown Resorts was once heralded as a great Australian business, achieving phenomenal growth, generating jobs across the country, and transforming the skylines of its busiest metropolitan hubs in Sydney and Melbourne with lofty glass skyscraper buildings.
Under new management and leadership Crown aims to get back to those days. New CEO Ciaran Carruthers has apologized unreservedly for the failings of the past, and has tried to re-focus the attention on his firm towards the future ambitions of the company. Carruthers has pledged to ensure that the proper control measures remain implemented in order to avoid a repeat of the past.
Crown’s new leadership will need to remain diligent so that the mistakes of the past are not allowed to repeat themselves. Casinos in Australia across the nation have been displaying weakness in protecting the integrity of their services, with many of the country’s biggest brands caught engaging with money laundering clientele, and generally taking a meager stance towards upholding the full gambling regulatory framework to the letter.
Channel Nine Expose Casino Criminality in Australia
Back in 2019 when the scandal surrounding Crown Resorts first hit the press, Channel Nine News – one of Australia’s major broadcasting networks, broke the news to the world. Their scathing investigation of Crown shocked the entire gaming industry, and revealed a deeply entrenched system of corruption which had been infiltrated by criminal syndicates.
The investigative journalism kickstarted a series of investigations into the casino, which two-years later by judgment of a Royal Commission was found to have been guilty of a string of legal violations. Ultimately, the casino allowed a group of Chinese customers to transfer over $160 million out of China into the casino between 2012 and 2016.
