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Star Entertainment insiders familiar with the controversial 2018 board audit committee meeting during which a damning KPMG report was presented provide a different spin on the events that led to chief executive Matt Bekier’s angry response to the document this week.
They maintain the board had been blindsided by the report, which directors had only learnt of when they received the board papers three days before the meeting. And they had not been privy to the fact that it had been commissioned.
Matt Bekier CEO of Star Entertainment .Credit:Dominic Lorrimer
Even the chairman of the audit committee Zlatko Todorcevski - who is now the chief executive of Boral - had not seen the KPMG report before the meeting. And it was his decision not to invite its authors into the room on the basis that directors had not yet read it.
The insiders, who do not want to be identified, said Bekier had first seen the report only 24 hours earlier and his reaction was explained by the fact the report was at odds with the findings of two previous audits - one done by Orange Advisory and another from financial crimes watchdog, AUSTRAC.
The executive who had hired KPMG, the then chief risk officer Paul McWilliams, testified that Bekier had said during the meeting that “it was unacceptable for the report to be prepared in this way” and that it was “factually incorrect”.
The royal commission-like hearing into Star’s suitability to hold a casino licence helmed by Adam Bell has heard testimony that Bekier refused to accept the report and attempted to water down some of its findings.
There is agreement that there were robust discussions between the KPMG partners and Bekier - with one of the partners Alexander Graham describing how during these “challenging” meetings he was berated by the Star’s chief executive.
The Star insider who didn’t attend the meetings between Bekier and Graham said their understanding was that Bekier was attempting to reconcile the disparities between KPMG’s reports and the previous audit investigations. The inquiry heard there were 22 specific aspects of the report to ‘clarify’.
KPMG’s report detailed how Star was falling short of its anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing obligations (AML CTF). All customers were considered “low risk” by default and gamblers could bring as much as $200,000 cash into the casino without automatically being classified as “high risk”.