Deputy Police Commissioner Col Blanch has told the WA Royal Commission that Crown Perth was used by criminal organisations to move cash through casino junkets and avoid detection from regulators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Australia.-\u00a0Western Australia\u2019s Royal Commission<\/strong>\u00a0has heard\u00a0<\/strong>that\u00a0Crown Perth\u00a0<\/strong>was used by high-rollers to offset cash provided by organised crime organisations through the hawala system, which allows cash to be moved outside of traditional banking systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Deputy Police Commissioner Col Blanch\u00a0<\/strong>said overseas VIP players who wanted to gamble in Australia and needed more Australian dollars because of their own country’s limitations on cross-border fund transfers would use brokers to supply the cash.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to The Australian, he said: “If you have the right broker, they can actually arrange for drug trafficking money to be given to that person wittingly or unwittingly to gamble with, as long as they hand their money in their country of origin over to the person that organised it, and then it finds its way back to the drug trafficker.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rachel Murray, Crown Resorts’ internal audit manager, had previously said of junket operations: <\/strong>\u201cI know there was an approval process but I can\u2019t remember who was involved in that process.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paul Evans<\/a>, GWC\u2019s lawyer, has said that although the\u00a0Western Australian Royal Commission<\/a>\u00a0into\u00a0Crown 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\n\n\n The WA Royal Commission previously heard\u00a0<\/strong>that\u00a0Crown Perth\u2019s\u00a0<\/strong>special treatment for high rollers cost it\u00a0millions.\u00a0<\/strong>According to\u00a0John Alexander<\/strong>, former Crown Resorts chief executive, Crown Perth tried to\u00a0attract 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, Crown Perth funded approximately AU$950,000 in wedding expenses<\/strong>. However, Alexander admitted that sometimes high rollers chose not to gamble, which resulted in big debts <\/strong>for the casino operator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cahill said the wedding party resulted in a loss of AU$3.1m <\/strong>for Crown Perth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Deputy Police Commissioner Col Blanch has told the WA Royal Commission that Crown Perth was used by criminal organisations to move cash through casino junkets and avoid detection from regulators.<\/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":"The Western Australia Royal Commission has heard that Crown Perth facilitated money laundering for criminal organizations through its junket operations, utilizing the hawala system to circumvent traditional financial controls. Concurrently, the casino operator incurred substantial losses by offering extravagant incentives to high-rollers who often failed to gamble, raising significant governance and financial viability concerns. The ongoing inquiry may prompt the gaming regulator to recommend license cancellation before its conclusion.","focusai_entities":"Col Blanch, Crown Perth, Crown Resorts, Rachel Murray, Paul Evans, GWC, Reece Whitby, John Alexander, Patricia Cahill","focusai_location":"Australia, Western Australia","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (1.0), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (1.0), operator_casino (0.9), payments_fraud_aml (1.0), investor_analyst (1.0), supplier_vendor (0.7), journalist_researcher (1.0)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"License Revocation Impact","query":"What specific financial and operational ramifications would a license cancellation for Crown Perth have on Crown Resorts' broader market position and shareholder value?"},{"label":"AML Systemic Failures","query":"Beyond Crown Perth, what systemic vulnerabilities in current B2B\/B2C licensing and AML frameworks are exposed by the hawala system's exploitation in VIP gaming, and what immediate regulatory reforms are anticipated?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16336,156,158],"tags":[14657],"class_list":["post-22950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australasia-news","category-regulation-news","category-slider-home","tag-crown-resorts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22950","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=22950"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22957,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22950\/revisions\/22957"}],"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=22950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Crown\u2019s special treatment for high rollers led to big losses<\/h2>\n\n\n\n