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What, exactly, does a casino operator have to do to be shut down?
Systemic money laundering? Not enough. Crown Melbourne and Crown Perth were fined $450 million for money laundering and are still going. AUSTRAC has accused Star of allowing the laundering of billions of dollars.
Being infiltrated by organised crime isn’t enough either — as both Crown and Star have been.
If helping terrorists and organised crime isn’t enough to get these spivs shut down, problem gambling won’t: Crown’s efforts to stop problem gamblers were little more than a joke, and the more recent performance of the allegedly reformed company has been little better; Star was found to have actively encouraged patrons banned elsewhere to come to its Queensland casino.
Hell, being found unsuitable to hold a casino licence isn’t enough. Crown was found unsuitable in Sydney and Perth and Melbourne. Star was found unsuitable in Sydney not once but twice, as well as in Brisbane. They’re still going.
Plotting to go to war with the regulator, allowing a cash fountain to spew money for seven weeks, asking a chief financial officer to doctor accounts to hide losses, falsifying documents and point-blank refusing to cooperate with authorities — all on display at Star as heard by the second Bell inquiry — are also clearly not enough, as yesterday’s decision on Star by the NSW Independent Casino Commission (NICC) shows. Star has received a wrist-slap fine.
And the executives who plotted to attack the regulator or who are accused of covering up misconduct at the casino won’t be pursued, NICC chairman Philip Crawford says.
What an absolute farce.
The reason, according to Crawford, is that people might lose their jobs. “We’re very heavily still motivated by what our perception of the public interest is,” Crawford said. “If Sydney Star fails, the Star Group will fail and that’s a group that employs 9,000-plus people. And if you add onto that the huge number of suppliers to the business, it would affect the lives of a lot of people … particularly given the current economic times.”
Crawford’s use of the phrase “public interest” is interesting. He runs a casino regulator, not NSW Treasury. The role of the NICC is, in the words of its establishing legislation — section 140 of the NSW Casino Control Act 1992 — to:
maintain and administer systems for the licensing, supervision and control of a casino, for the purpose of—
(a) ensuring that the management and operation of the casino remains free from criminal influence or exploitation, and
(a1) ensuring that the casino operator prevents money laundering and terrorism financing activities within the operations of the casino, and
(b) ensuring that gaming in the casino is conducted honestly, and
(c) (Repealed)
(d) containing and controlling the potential of a casino to cause harm to the public interest and to individuals and families.
But this isn’t the only use of “public interest” in the act. The law also requires the NICC to inquire into casino licences at least every five years to decide if the operator “is a suitable person to continue to give effect to the casino licence and this act, and it is in the public interest that the casino licence should continue in force”.
So if the act focuses on ensuring the risk to the public interest from casinos is contained, decisions about who holds licences and their suitability must include some consideration of the unspecified “public interest” arising from the use of licences. And that latter usage is what Crawford and the regulator have relied on to determine that there will be no meaningful consequences from the extraordinary misconduct revealed at Star by Bell II. In the regulator’s view, the public interest lies in keeping in work the 9,000 people Star employs.
The NICC has basically guaranteed Star can do anything and that it will always be in the public interest that it be kept going — even in its current financially decrepit state, with the regulator towing its corpse around Darling Harbour Weekend At Bernie’s-style.
Star Casino is like Donald Trump, who boasted he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without voters objecting — except Star has already allowed money laundering, infiltration by organised crime, problem gambling and financial cover-ups to occur, and serially been found unsuitable. It’s as if Star employees are human shields that will enable Star’s board and management to do whatever they like.
This is particularly the case given that the “current economic times” referred to by Crawford include a buoyant jobs market with unemployment of 4.1% and record participation, suggesting 9,000, or even 90,000, people would have no trouble finding jobs in far more useful industries than a casino, and very quickly.
What the NICC has failed to do is balance the requirements of its act — to control the “harm to the public interest” from Star’s repeated and persistent misconduct as well as “the public interest that the casino licence should continue in force”.
It has given all of its emphasis to the latter, effectively ensuring that Star can continue to harm the public interest via money laundering, organised crime, misconduct, problem gambling — and who knows what else that will emerge from its ongoing operations.