Crown Resorts sent a letter to the Victorian gaming minister saying there would be “severe consequences” if it cannot hold its licence for its second Sydney casino, the state’s Royal Commission has heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Australia.- Crown Resorts’ lawyer Leon Zwier<\/strong>\u00a0wrote a letter to the\u00a0Victorian gaming minister Melissa Horne<\/strong>\u00a0warning that 12,000 jobs would be at risk if Crown is unable to retain its gaming licence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The letter, which was made public on the last day of public hearings held by Victoria’s Royal Commission, also noted that\u00a0the casino operator wouldn’t comply with its lending covenants<\/strong>\u00a0which total $700m if it loses the licence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zwier wrote: \u201cThis will impact Crown\u2019s shareholders, employees, unions, trade creditors, patrons, the hotel precinct, and the\u00a0Melbourne tourism industry<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Former Federal Court judge\u00a0Raymond Finkelstein<\/strong>, who\u2019s leading the\u00a0Victoria\u2019s Royal Commission<\/a>, said the letter made it seem Crown Resorts wanted to \u201cmake sure that the commission doesn\u2019t make a particular finding.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Helen Coonan<\/strong>, Crown Resorts\u2019 executive chairman, denied that the operator had attempted to lean on the state government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last week, Coonan told the Royal Commission<\/a>\u00a0that she had suggested former Crown CEO\u00a0Ken Barton<\/a>\u00a0should resign last year after James Packer testified to New South Wales\u2019 inquiry into Crown\u2019s suitability to hold its new Sydney casino licence last year. Coonan said she was \u201coverruled\u201d by Crown\u2019s board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said: \u201cI became increasingly concerned about the strategy<\/strong> then as the evidence began to unfold, and I thought we needed to take a very different approach.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Crown Resorts sent a letter to the Victorian gaming minister saying there would be “severe consequences” if it cannot hold its licence for its second Sydney casino, the state’s Royal Commission has heard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":18008,"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 has issued a stark warning to the Victorian gaming minister, outlining \"severe consequences,\" including 12,000 job losses and a $700m lending covenant breach, should it lose its gaming license. This communication, revealed during Victoria's Royal Commission hearings, has raised concerns about potential undue influence, a claim denied by Crown's executive chairman.","focusai_entities":"Crown Resorts, Melissa Horne, Leon Zwier, Raymond Finkelstein, Helen Coonan, Ken Barton, James Packer","focusai_location":"Australia, Victoria, Sydney, New South Wales, Melbourne","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (0.9), operator_casino (0.8), investor_analyst (1.0), supplier_vendor (0.7), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Covenant Breach Impact","query":"What are the specific financial and operational ramifications for Crown Resorts should it breach its $700m lending covenants due to license revocation?"},{"label":"Regulatory Precedent","query":"How might the Victorian Royal Commission's final recommendations regarding Crown Resorts' suitability influence future B2C licensing and governance frameworks across Australian jurisdictions?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16336,156],"tags":[23825,14657],"class_list":["post-20136","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\/20136","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=20136"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20161,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20136\/revisions\/20161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}