In Australia, several gambling operators now must defend themselves against accusations of money laundering. Among them is not only the Crown casino, which already lives with a penalty for confirmed money laundering.
There are two other providers against whom the accusation of money laundering has been made: Star Entertainment and SkyCity Entertainment Group.
We would now like to explain how these providers are defending themselves.
SkyCity Entertainment Partially Admits Guilt
The SkyCity group is lucky in that it only has to deal with incidents at one casino.
The talk is of SkyCity Adelaide, where the duty of care had been breached.
Due diligence refers to the screening of customers.
For example, it is forbidden for Australian casinos to accept customers from a country where gambling is not allowed by law.
Although SkyCity Entertainment has not yet commented in detail, this could be where the problems lie.
In addition, it has been announced that there is poor maintenance of the AML/CTF program.
However, SkyCity Entertainment’s management has confirmed that the group would fight against money laundering together with the authorities and takes the problem very seriously.
Moving forward, the management has promised to continue to work closely with the relevant authorities to address the issue.
Nevertheless, the Group will have to endure an investigation.
First and foremost, it must be investigated whether the violation of the AML/CTF program occurred over an extended period of time.
Star Entertainment Largely Denies Allegations
Star Entertainment has also taken a stance on the AUSTRAC accusations and at the moment suspects that the accusation could have happened at most at Star Casino Sydney.
In this casino, the verification of customers could have come up short.
It is known that certain high-risk customers were given access.
Interestingly, these incidents happened already since 2015 – thus, they are not new incidents.
Nevertheless, the allegations have only now been brought forward.
So far, Star Entertainment has responded similarly to SkyCity Entertainment, confirming that they have always fought against money laundering and would continue to do so.
If the accusations can indeed be confirmed, this would not have been done on purpose.
In any case, they would do everything possible in the future to ensure that something like this does not happen again.
Interestingly, neither SkyCity Entertainment nor Star Entertainment has been fined yet.
This is either because the investigation is still ongoing or because the corporations have promised to work with the authorities to fight money laundering.
Crown Has Slowly Rehabilitated Itself
A penalty was enforced against Crown last year: The license for the third casino in Barangaroo was revoked.
This caused significant damage to the corporation, as the construction of the casino cost several million dollars.
However, the Crown may have hope, as the license will be granted if Crown adheres to the set measures.
These included, for example, the restructuring of the management.
The first step was taken by Ken Benton, who voluntarily resigned.
Similarly, Crown had to end its cooperation with the junket operators, who were infiltrating rich people from China into Crown casinos.
It was also demanded that security regulations be increased.
In addition, Crown must no longer accept cash – instead, a secure card system must be installed.
The second penalty Crown received, in addition to the license revocation, was a fine of 14.4 million dollars.
This amount is intended to pay the costs of the investigation.
The sum also includes the supervisory fees for 2021 and 2022.
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