The judge has criticised AUSTRAC for agreeing to Crown’s proposed timeframe for admissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Australia.- Justice Michael Lee<\/strong> has criticised AUSTRAC’s drawn-out handling of its prosecution of Crown Resorts for anti-money laundering (AML) failings. He’s ordered the two parties to reach an agreed statement of facts with a senior registrar by April 17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lee questioned whether AUSTRAC <\/strong>was serious about prosecuting the case after it agreed to a request from Crown to wait until May to settle on agreed facts and admissions and for Crown to prepare a defence. That would be 15 months after it commenced proceedings against Crown Melbourne and Crown Perth for systemic non-compliance with AML and counter-terrorism financing laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said: \u201cThe Congress of Vienna took nine months to talk about the future of Europe, you\u2019ve had 12 months to talk about admissions. I\u2019m not going to give any more time for there to be chit-chat between solicitors. We\u2019re going to get the matter on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He added: \u201cI just find it astounding. Why on earth would a regulator agree to a timetable like that? It\u2019s in the public interests that these proceedings be determined and be determined with alacrity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s already meandered for a year. I just want to know whether the regulator in this case is serious about running the case or not? Because if they\u2019re serious about running this case, I do not understand why they\u2019re suggesting it\u2019d be 15 months before the court starts managing the case.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lee ordered Crown to file a brief response to AUSTRAC\u2019s allegations by February 27. The next case management hearing is scheduled for April 28. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Crown Resorts has shared its financial results for the financial year 2022. It\u2019s reported an AU$945.4m (US$632.18m) loss while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) was negative AU$699.6m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Revenue was up 20 per cent<\/strong> year-on-year to AU$1.9bn (US$1.27bn). Crown Melbourne\u2019s revenue increased from AU$567.5m to AU$923.8m and Crown Sydney\u2019s from AU$68.4m to AU$113m, while Crown Perth\u2019s revenue fell from AU$740.9m to AU$731.7m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The judge has criticised AUSTRAC for agreeing to Crown’s proposed timeframe for admissions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":22502,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"Justice Michael Lee has critically questioned AUSTRAC's protracted prosecution of Crown Resorts for systemic anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CTF) non-compliance, ordering an expedited resolution. This judicial intervention comes as Crown Resorts reported a significant AU$945.4m loss for FY22, alongside varied revenue performance across its Melbourne, Sydney, and Perth properties.","focusai_entities":"AUSTRAC, Crown Resorts, Justice Michael Lee, Crown Melbourne, Crown Perth, Crown Sydney","focusai_location":"Australia","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (1.0), operator_casino (0.9), payments_fraud_aml (0.9), investor_analyst (1.0), supplier_vendor (0.7), journalist_researcher (1.0)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"AUSTRAC's Enforcement Strategy","query":"What specific changes to AUSTRAC's enforcement strategy or resource allocation might result from Justice Lee's criticism regarding the pace of the Crown Resorts prosecution?"},{"label":"Crown's Financial Outlook","query":"How will the expedited resolution of the AML case, combined with the reported FY22 loss, impact Crown Resorts' capital expenditure plans and future market positioning in Australia?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16336,439,158],"tags":[23793,14657],"class_list":["post-777002405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australasia-news","category-legal-news","category-slider-home","tag-austrac","tag-crown-resorts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777002405","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=777002405"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777002405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777002418,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777002405\/revisions\/777002418"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777002405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777002405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777002405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Crown Resorts posts loss of US$632.18m for FY22<\/h2>\n\n\n\n