The state\u2019s Royal Commission into Crown Perth is being led by Neville Owen, who has personal interests with some of the witnesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Australia.- The Royal Commission examining\u00a0<\/strong>Crown Perth<\/a>\u00a0has taken a new turn after\u00a0Geoffrey Watson SC<\/strong>, a former senior counsel for New South Wales’s corruption watchdog,\u00a0questioned the choice of Neville Owen as lead commissioner<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Watson claims\u00a0Owen has connections with Kerry Stokes, a local billionaire who controls various businesses<\/strong>. He says Owen is the director of Clabon Pty Ltd, which is a shareholder in Stokes\u2019 private investment vehicle, Australian Capital.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Owen has admitted that one of the committee witnesses,\u00a0Crown Burswood director Maryna Fivester<\/strong>, was the chief executive officer of Seven West Media, one of Stoke’s companies. The inquiry also heard\u00a0from John Alexander<\/strong>, a former Crown executive who is a member of the Seven West board.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to ABC, Stokes also has a close relationship with Crown\u2019s major shareholder James Parker<\/strong>\u00a0and managed his personal affairs during a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Owen has dismissed suggestions of a conflict of interests, but Watson insisted the Royal Commission needed to be “utterly independent and beyond reproach.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n WA premier Mark McGowan has given his support to Owen<\/strong>\u00a0describing him as an “eminent jurist” and praising his experience and honour. however, former premier Colin Barnett said Owen’s appointment was odd<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He said: “For a person of his knowledge and his expertise, you would have expected he would have thought that was relevant, that he declare his association with Stokes.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to John Alexander<\/strong>, former Crown Resorts<\/a> chief executive, Crown Perth tried to attract VIP clients by offering luxury yachts<\/strong>, private jets and even subsidising multi-million dollar weddings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the approach brought huge losses for the casino operator. During the inquiry, Patricia Cahill<\/strong>, counsel assisting the Royal Commission, cited the example of a wedding that was held for a friend of an intermediary at a cost of more than AU$2.75m. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Cahill,\u00a0Crown Perth funded approximately AU$950,000 in wedding expenses<\/strong>. However, Alexander admitted that sometimes\u00a0high rollers chose not to gamble, which resulted in big debts\u00a0<\/strong>for the casino operator. Cahill said\u00a0the wedding party resulted in a loss of AU$3.1m\u00a0<\/strong>for Crown Perth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The inquiry also heard that a gambler has an AU$29m debt since February 2014.<\/strong> Another gambler had debts of AU$10m, which have been outstanding since October 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alexander argued that\u00a0Crown Perth\u2019s ability to enforce debt repayment was \u201cvery limited\u201d because the gamblers live in another country<\/strong>. He said individual high rollers were harder to recover debts from, compared to junket operators, who guaranteed the debts of participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In July, Paul Evans<\/a>, GWC\u2019s lawyer, said that although the Western Australian Royal Commission<\/a> into Crown Perth will continue until March 2022<\/strong>, the gaming regulator may call on Racing and Gaming Minister Reece Whitby to cancel Crown\u2019s licence before the ending of the inquiry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The state\u2019s Royal Commission into Crown Perth is being led by Neville Owen, who has personal interests with some of the witnesses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":20056,"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 Royal Commission into Crown Perth faces scrutiny over lead commissioner Neville Owen's alleged conflicts of interest with key witnesses and stakeholders. Concurrently, the inquiry has revealed Crown Perth's past operational strategies, including offering luxury incentives to high rollers, which led to significant financial losses and unrecoverable international debts. The ongoing investigation raises concerns about the operator's governance and the potential for early license revocation.","focusai_entities":"Neville Owen, Crown Perth, Geoffrey Watson SC, Kerry Stokes, Clabon Pty Ltd, Australian Capital, Maryna Fivester, Seven West Media, John Alexander, James Parker, Mark McGowan, Colin Barnett, Patricia Cahill, Paul Evans, GWC, Reece Whitby, Crown Burswood","focusai_location":"Australia, New South Wales, Western Australia","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (1.0), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (0.9), operator_casino (1.0), investor_analyst (1.0), supplier_vendor (0.7), journalist_researcher (1.0)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Owen's Conflict Impact?","query":"How might the alleged conflict of interest involving Commissioner Neville Owen impact the perceived impartiality and ultimate findings of the Crown Perth Royal Commission, particularly regarding its legal enforceability?"},{"label":"VIP Strategy Failures?","query":"What specific governance and risk management failures within Crown Perth's VIP program led to such substantial unrecoverable debts and regulatory exposure, and what lessons can other operators draw?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16336,156],"tags":[20215,14657,23911],"class_list":["post-21972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australasia-news","category-regulation-news","tag-crown-perth","tag-crown-resorts","tag-gambling-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21972","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=21972"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21986,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21972\/revisions\/21986"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Crown Perth used private jets and luxury yachts to attract high rollers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n