THE STAR HID $900M IN GAMBLING TRANSACTIONS FROM BANKS
The first day of public hearings in an inquiry examining The Star’s Sydney casino licence heard the ASX-listed casino group’s chief financial officer, Harry Theodore, and general counsel, Oliver White, were both involved in misleading NAB and China UnionPay about the transactions in 2019.
The NSW Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority launched the review late last year to assess whether The Star is fit to hold its licence, and will probe allegations by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and 60 Minutes of money laundering, criminal infiltration and wide-scale fraud at the Pyrmont casino.
The inquiry dived into one of those matters on Thursday, examining how The Star accepted payments from UnionPay bank cards at hotels attached to its Sydney, Brisbane and Gold Coast casinos, and then transferred the money to patrons’ gambling accounts.
Counsel assisting the inquiry Naomi Sharp, SC, told the inquiry that about $900 million had been processed through the scheme, which left it open to money laundering, breached The Star’s merchant agreement with its bank (NAB), and potentially provided a way for patrons to evade China’s tight capital controls.
Emails showed NAB, which provided The Star’s terminals, first contacted The Star in June 2019 to relay concerns from UnionPay about “large-amount gambling transactions” which had been processed with a merchant code that identified them as being for hotel expenses. UnionPay does not permit gambling transactions on its cards and gambling is illegal in China.
Paulinka Dudek, The Star’s assisting group treasurer, who had joined the company in March 2019 as a senior manager, responded to NAB that The Star operated “hotels, restaurants and other entertainment facilities”, and that the cardholders purchased hotel rooms, and forwarded their invoices.
Casino rival Crown Resorts operated a similar UnionPay scam at its Melbourne casino, which saw more than $160 million of gambling transactions disguised as hotel expenses and was revealed at Victoria’s royal commission last year.
Read more: By Patrick Hatch >>> https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/utterly-misleading-the-star-hid-900m-in-gambling-transactions-from-banks-20220317-p5a5cn.html
