Crown Resorts learns its fate in Victoria after defeat in New South Wales
Crown Resorts is still leading the way in Australia, accused of blatant breaches of existing financial and gambling regulations. It has already seen its casino licence in New South Wales (NSW) suspended by regulators after an extensive investigation, and faced a similar review in Victoria and Western Australia (WA). While WA has requested significantly more time to complete a review of Crown operations, Victoria has completed its investigation and the results were released today.
Crown trying to steer the ship
A few years ago, Crown began to have difficulties, which have spilled over into the general public. A contingent of employees were arrested in China for facilitating the company's gambling activities in the country, and shortly afterwards a whistleblower reported that at least one of the casino operator's properties was guilty of hacking into slot machines. At first these problems were usually hidden, but when reports of alleged money laundering on a massive scale and players linked to genocidal maniacs visiting casinos came to light, things quickly became interesting.
Almost the entire upper echelon of Crown was replaced as New South Wales was the first to restrict and suspend the company's casino licence in the state. Further investigations were subsequently launched in Victoria and Washington and now Victoria has published its final findings. It determined, as did New South Wales, that Crown was ineligible for a casino licence. However, that is where the correlation with the NSW investigation ends.
Meanwhile, another gambling giant Caesars Palace has undergone a multi-million pound refurbishment.
Crown gets a reprieve
Instead of revoking Crown's casino licence, Victoria has decided to show some leniency. Former federal magistrate Ray Finkelstein led the investigation, eventually submitting a 652-page report to the government, which decided to implement almost all of his recommendations. One was to give Crown time to fix its problems while it operated for some "probationary" period.
When the Crown Commission released its decision today, it said: "For a very short time, the Commission found that for many years Crown Melbourne had engaged in conduct that was, in a word, disgraceful. This is a convenient shorthand to describe conduct that was, to varying degrees, unlawful, dishonest, unethical and exploitative."
However, when you are a multimillion-dollar company, providing significant jobs and tax revenues to the budget, illegal and unethical activities often go unchecked. Finkelstein said that the seriousness of the problems requires the suspension of Crown's license, instead Betting Utan Svensk Licens will operate in the area and you can find out more about it by going to https://utansvensklicens.casino/betting-utan-svensk-licens/.
Crown tomorrow will be completely different
Crown has done a good job of convincing regulators and government agencies that it has seen the error of its ways and is ready to put things right. Two years is a long time and since then we will see many changes - both from regulators and companies. Crown has already started to make changes to appease the regulators, but some of these, such as the introduction of a dedicated compliance officer, should have come about years ago.
The company still has to deal with WA, whose investigation will not be completed until next year . It is unclear how it will lean. However, if Finkelstein's other recommendation comes true, he could make an easier decision. The former judge recommended that Crown founder and former boss James Packer should be sacked from the company to the maximum extent possible. This includes forcing a reduction in his stake from the current 36% to no more than 5%. However, how this transition will be carried out has not been disclosed.
