incident in 2016<\/a><\/em><\/strong> in which 19 Crown officials were found guilty of promoting gambling in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNow they have seen text messages from financial adviser and Crown director, Michael Johnston, who warned Packer to wait for a further inquiry before striking a AU$1.8 billion (US$1.27 billion) deal with Melco for 19.9 per cent of the operator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Advisors wanted to investigate whether Stanley Ho still had significant involvement in Melco Resorts, which would ban it from taking an interest in the Australian operator under the NSW government’s gaming licence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To the text, Packer replied: “Sure, but, Mike, it is my life and I’m going to overrule you.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ho had a 20 per cent stake in Melco International, which owned a third of Melco Resorts. Johnston said he was unaware of this when advising Packer on the deal, and that Crown management had not been informed of the intention of selling these shares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Packer himself is scheduled to face the ILGA inquiry later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cIt\u2019s my life and I\u2019m going to overrule you,\u201d the shareholder told director Michael Johnston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"The New South Wales Liquor and Gaming Authority's inquiry into Crown Resorts' casino license fitness has revealed that major shareholder James Packer disregarded financial advisor warnings regarding the AU$1.8 billion sale of a 19.9% stake to Melco Resorts. Advisors had flagged potential regulatory non-compliance due to Stanley Ho's indirect involvement with Melco, which could contravene NSW gaming license conditions. This disclosure, alongside previous compliance breaches in China, intensifies scrutiny on Crown's governance frameworks and B2C licensing viability.","focusai_entities":"Crown Resorts, James Packer, Michael Johnston, Lawrence Ho, Melco Resorts, Melco International, New South Wales Liquor and Gaming Authority, Stanley Ho","focusai_location":"Australia, New South Wales, Barangaroo, China","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (1.0), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (1.0), operator_casino (0.9), payments_fraud_aml (0.8), investor_analyst (1.0), supplier_vendor (0.7), journalist_researcher (1.0)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Crown License Impact","query":"What are the projected financial and operational implications for Crown Resorts if the New South Wales Liquor and Gaming Authority revokes or imposes severe conditions on its Barangaroo casino license?"},{"label":"Governance Frameworks","query":"How will this inquiry influence the governance frameworks and internal compliance protocols for other major iGaming operators engaged in cross-border M&A activities, particularly concerning beneficial ownership disclosures?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16336,161,439,158],"tags":[14657,4503,665],"class_list":["post-10424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australasia-news","category-daily-news","category-legal-news","category-slider-home","tag-crown-resorts","tag-legal","tag-melco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10424"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10433,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10424\/revisions\/10433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}