{"id":10986,"date":"2020-10-18T15:48:18","date_gmt":"2020-10-18T15:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/?p=10986"},"modified":"2026-04-24T00:54:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T03:54:19","slug":"crown-resorts-chair-we-can-do-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/crown-resorts-chair-we-can-do-better","title":{"rendered":"Crown Resorts chair: \u201cWe can do better\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Helen Coonan has admitted background checks on VIP guests were not robust enough. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>Australia.- Crown Resorts&#8217; chair, Helen Coonan, has admitted its background checks on VIP guests were not \u201crobust\u201d enough and promised that the group \u201ccan do better\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the NSW Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority (<strong><em>ILGA<\/em><\/strong>) hearing into the operator&#8217;s suitability to hold a Sydney casino licence, the company recognised that it did not run the proper checks on Chinese high rollers and let them use unsupervised bank accounts to make transfers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Questioned by the inquiry, Coonan said the group&#8217;s operations to attract Chinese customers had a large risk, but that the concerns of staff had not been escalated through risk management channels. The operation led to the arrest of 19 company officials in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She said: \u201cI think we can do better as we have alluded to in the course of these proceedings [&#8230;] in respect of not casting the net wide enough to people associated with junkets, affiliates and the like.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Coonan, who was <strong><em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/ken-barton-crown-resorts-director\" target=\"_blank\">appointed chair in January<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, said the company was not initiating a review of the procedures at the moment, while legal matters such as the class suit brought by Crown shareholders for losses incurred after the China incident remained pending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Helen Coonan has admitted background checks on VIP guests were not robust enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"Crown Resorts' chair, Helen Coonan, has acknowledged that the operator's background checks on VIP guests, particularly Chinese high rollers, were inadequate, leading to the use of unsupervised bank accounts and staff concerns not being escalated. This admission occurred during an NSW ILGA hearing concerning Crown's Sydney casino license suitability, with legal matters, including a shareholder class action, still pending.","focusai_entities":"Helen Coonan, Crown Resorts, NSW Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority, ILGA","focusai_location":"Australia, Sydney, China","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (1.0), operator_casino (0.9), payments_fraud_aml (0.8), investor_analyst (0.9), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Crown's Governance Framework?","query":"What specific enhancements to Crown Resorts' corporate governance framework and risk management protocols are being implemented to prevent future AML and KYC compliance failures, particularly concerning VIP client onboarding and junket operations?"},{"label":"Sydney License Impact?","query":"What is the projected impact of these admissions and ongoing legal proceedings on Crown Resorts' suitability to retain its Sydney casino license, and what precedent might this set for other operators' regulatory compliance obligations?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16336,28],"tags":[289,14657,23728],"class_list":["post-10986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australasia-news","category-casino-news","tag-australia","tag-crown-resorts","tag-ilga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10986","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=10986"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777017187,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10986\/revisions\/777017187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}