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The Star Entertainment Group let the notorious “junket” gambling tour operator Suncity run a private gaming salon at its Sydney casino despite a string of incidents that strongly indicated it was laundering dirty cash.
And the casino group’s chief executive Matt Bekier later misled journalists by saying The Star and Suncity had “mutually agreed” to shut the room in August 2019, when The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age exposed the junket’s criminal links.
CCTV footage showing Suncity staff dealing with large amounts of cash in the junket’s private gaming salon at the Star, which one casino executive said appeared to be money laundering.
In fact, Suncity had simply moved to another room in the Pyrmont complex without its branding so it could continue to run a “casino within a casino”, the royal commission-style inquiry into its casino licence heard on Wednesday.
The Hong Kong-based Suncity was the world’s largest “junket”, bringing ultra-wealthy Chinese gamblers to Australian casinos, where they would gamble millions of dollars an hour. But Suncity’s dealing with Star and rival casino Crown Resorts became a major scandal in 2019 when The Age and the Herald revealed its ties to powerful Asian crime syndicates.
The Star inquiry - which was also triggered by reporting in The Age and the Herald - heard the casino gave Suncity a private gaming room in 2016 for its customers to use for gambling, on the condition they used the Star’s “cage” to purchase or cash in gaming chips.
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But CCTV footage captured numerous instances in 2018 and 2019 of large amounts of cash bundled up in suitcases, cooler bags and backpacks being brought into the room, and chips being exchanged for cash from a service desk.
Star was aware of these incidents and sent Suncity two “warning letters”.When the Star’s lead investigator Andrew McGregor tried to interview Suncity staff in May 2018 about one incident, in which a non-junket player was brought into the room and given $45,000 in cash, they “refused to answer any questions”. But despite this, The Star renewed its junket agreement with Suncity in June 2018 and continued its relationship until October 2020.
Counsel assisting the inquiry, Naomi Sharp, SC, put to the Star’s group manager of due diligence and intelligence, Angus Buchanan, that this decision was “a completely inappropriate step to take in view of the very high risk that money laundering was taking place in the VIP salon occupied by the Suncity junket”.