{"id":19818,"date":"2021-07-02T16:32:14","date_gmt":"2021-07-02T16:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/?p=19818"},"modified":"2026-04-23T17:58:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T20:58:31","slug":"crown-credit-card-transactions-reveal-possible-money-laundering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/crown-credit-card-transactions-reveal-possible-money-laundering","title":{"rendered":"Crown credit card transactions reveal possible money laundering"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victoria\u2019s Royal Commission has heard that Crown Resorts may have accepted credit card payments in exchange for gaming chips or cash at its Melbourne hotel desk venue between 2012 and 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>Australia.- Steven Blackburn,\u00a0<strong>Crown Resorts&#8217; chief financial crimes officer<\/strong>, has told Victoria\u2019s Royal Commission that a review of credit card transactions would find\u00a0<strong>indications of money laundering<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Blackburn said that the\u00a0total value of credit card payments taken by the casino operator <strong>could total more than the AU$160m (US$119.7m<\/strong>). He said senior managers should have known the practice could be used for money laundering.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Former Federal Court judge<strong>\u00a0Raymond Finkelstein<\/strong>, who&#8217;s leading the inquiry,\u00a0said the practice of processing payments through the hotel desk and issuing fake hotel invoices was no accident. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said: &#8220;The whole thing was<strong>\u00a0a fraudulent scam from the outset\u00a0<\/strong>and everybody involved would have known that.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In May,\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/crown-money-laundering-activity-detected-up-to-february-2021\">auditors Deloitte<\/a>\u00a0started to review almost<strong>\u00a050 bank accounts\u00a0<\/strong>for evidence of suspicious payments potentially linked to money laundering. A preliminary report suggested\u00a0<strong>a large sum of money had been divided across 14 accounts\u00a0<\/strong>to avoid the AU$10,000 disclosure threshold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Deloitte is also focusing on<strong>&nbsp;so-called patron accounts<\/strong>, used by Crown Resorts to allow customers to deposit money for use at casinos. It says these accounts could potentially be&nbsp;<strong>used for money laundering<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Blackburn however, said that Crown&#8217;s promotion of credit card facilities to Chinese visitors stopped in 2016 after\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/victorias-royal-commission-to-examine-crown-staff-arrests-in-china\">19 Crown employees were arrested in China<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The judge leading the state of Victoria\u2019s inquiry was originally due to<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/victorias-royal-commission-extends-inquiry-into-crown-resorts\">release his report by August 1<\/a>, but Finkelstein has ordered an extension to the inquiry up to October 15.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also asked for&nbsp;<strong>an increase in the commission\u2019s funding from AU$10m to AU$19.75m<\/strong>&nbsp;to continue investigating Crown Resorts suitability to maintain its licence for its&nbsp;<strong>Melbourne casino<\/strong>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victoria\u2019s Royal Commission has heard that Crown Resorts may have accepted credit card payments in exchange for gaming chips or cash at its Melbourne hotel desk venue between 2012 and 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":19821,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"Victoria\u2019s Royal Commission is investigating Crown Resorts for potentially facilitating money laundering between 2012-2016 by accepting credit card payments for gaming chips and cash, a practice senior management allegedly knew was fraudulent. The inquiry, led by Raymond Finkelstein, has extended its deadline to October 15 and increased funding to assess Crown's suitability to retain its Melbourne casino license amidst findings of suspicious transactions and potential non-compliance with financial crime regulations.","focusai_entities":"Crown Resorts, Steven Blackburn, Raymond Finkelstein, Deloitte","focusai_location":"Victoria, Australia, Melbourne, China","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.95), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (1.0), operator_casino (0.9), payments_fraud_aml (1.0), investor_analyst (0.95), supplier_vendor (0.7), journalist_researcher (0.95)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"License Suitability Impact","query":"What specific governance framework enhancements and financial crime prevention controls will Crown Resorts be mandated to implement to retain its Melbourne casino license, and what is the projected timeline for their full operationalization?"},{"label":"Regulatory Precedent","query":"How might the findings and penalties from Victoria's Royal Commission influence the regulatory compliance expectations and enforcement actions for other major iGaming operators across APAC jurisdictions?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16336,156],"tags":[23825,14657],"class_list":["post-19818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australasia-news","category-regulation-news","tag-crown-melbourne","tag-crown-resorts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19818","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\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19818"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19839,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19818\/revisions\/19839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}