State Officials Considering Stripping Sydney of Casino License, Given 14-Day Response Deadline

Star Entertainment is "inadequate and remains inadequate" to hold a license to operate a casino in New South Wales, a long-awaited report has said.

Adam Bell SC released a series of scathing findings Tuesday on Star's operations following a lengthy investigation that heard allegations of money laundering, organized crime, fraud, and foreign influence at the company's gaming facilities in New South Wales.

The report includes 30 recommendations, including requiring gaming cards in casinos.

Philip Crawford, chief commissioner of the Independent Casino Commission, which released the report, said Star has been served with a notice of cause and has 14 days to respond before deciding what action to take.He mentioned this during a press conference, which was reported via various news outlets.

Describing the report as "shocking" and "confronting," Crawford said the commission is considering all options, including revoking Star's license to operate casinos in New South Wales and fines of as much as $100 million.

'All I can say from the report is that doing nothing is not an option,' he said.

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He said Star "tended to ignore" the risks associated with their actions and "tried to hide" some of the consequences.

He said, "Money laundering, allowing criminals to gamble in casinos, infiltration of organized crime . . and paid little attention to appropriate harm minimization standards."

According to Crawford, the report detailed the "very real risk of criminal infiltration" in Starr's business and the escape of "large sums of cash" that Bell described as the onlinecasinoguide.co.nz company's "unsatisfactory" anti-money laundering policies.

Despite a string of high-profile resignations during the Bell investigation, Crawford said the committee remains concerned about the company's "alarming" level of "institutional arrogance." Crawford said there is "no atmosphere" that the company has learned from its mistakes.

There is still, he said, "an unwillingness to demonstrate the right level of transparency."

The Bell report comes just two weeks after the New South Wales government passed new laws in response to recommendations from another Burgin inquiry into Crown casinos.

Those laws established a casino commission and increased the penalties imposed on the company for license violations.

New South Wales Minister for Racing and Hospitality Kevin Anderson pointed to these changes on Tuesday in his criticism of the state government and regulators' neglect of the problems revealed by Bell.

'We have been resolute in our efforts to crack down on this particular practice, this corrupt practice, this toxic culture that has taken place at the Star,' he said.

On Tuesday, Anderson declined to say whether the government would accept all of the recommendations from the Bell report, including the introduction of mandatory gambling cards if casinos maintain their licenses.

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The report said that card-based play should be mandatory "for all gambling" in casinos "in a manner that reliably identifies users and enforces their exclusionary status (if any)."

The report considered card play "in the context of harm minimization and responsible gambling," but said such a measure would also have "other potential benefits, such as helping to combat money laundering."

Anderson said that while he "did not go into the details" of the report's recommendations, he would "discuss them with the [casino] commission."

The report found that Star's board has been "kept in the dark" on numerous occasions, but it also said that the board bears some responsibility for the problems uncovered by the investigation.

The board is responsible for shaping the culture of the company," the report said. But on the matters examined in this investigation, the board had little or no understanding of what people were doing at Star Entertainment "when no one was looking," Bell wrote.

Crawford said the committee remains concerned about Star's internal culture and feels the company needs "fresh eyes."

One of the problems with Star's turnaround is that no one on the board, on behalf of the company, has yet done a proper root cause analysis.

Until we know what went wrong, we will not understand what needs to be fixed."

The report found specific violations of the Casino Control Act and Star's own internal control policies.

In a statement to the ASX on Tuesday afternoon, Star said it was reviewing the matters raised in the report and the notice of concern.

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