Calls for Crown casino inquiry

Video footage showing dozens of “bricks” of $50 and $100 notes – hundreds of thousands of dollars worth – being casually handed over from a shopping bag in a high-rollers’ room at Melbourne’s Crown Casino have sparked renewed calls for a royal commission into alleged criminality at the casino.popular casinos

The footage, shot on Crown’s own security cameras, shows an unknown man handing over hundreds of thousands of dollars in Australian currency inside the Suncity junket room at Crown. He pulls the money, wrapped in elastic bands, from a freezer shopping bag, and waits, and appears to speak with friends and casino staff while it is exchanged for high-value casino chips.

Suncity is a Macau-based gambling tour operator that flies in wealthy Chinese gamblers to Australian casinos. It has a dedicated gaming room at Crown.The footage was leaked by three Victorian state gambling inspectors turned whistleblowers and released publicly by the independent member for Clark, Andrew Wilkie, who has repeatedly called for a royal commission into the casino.

“People probably think that everything that goes on is squeaky clean ... ,” one of the whistleblowers says on the footage, his voice obscured. “But in fact it’s fucked.“You see people coming in with bags of money, cash, it’s a junkets room, it’s specially designed for people that come in from overseas, the Suncity room at Crown.”

The Suncity room faced closure by the Victorian Commission for Gaming and Liquor Regulation in 2017 over alleged ties to organised crime, but remains open. The whistleblower said high-rollers in the casino were never challenged by casino staff.Anybody can walk in with any amount of money and launder it … Nobody really cares.

“They get to do what they want. They can bring anybody into the casino, they can bring in as much money as they like, nothing is ever said.”The whistleblower said a reduced presence of Victoria police inside the casino meant suspected criminals were able to allegedly launder money with impunity.

Wilkie has called for a royal commission into Crown, arguing the footage follows earlier allegations of money laundering, machine tampering, drug running and domestic violence at the casino. Crown has also been accused of breaking immigration laws to illegally bring people into Australia to gamble.

“For many years we’ve been told of shocking crimes occurring at Crown and now we have new footage that supports these claims,” Wilkie said.“The inspectors who have provided these videos say countless millions of dollars are regularly laundered inside Crown. Crown can no longer claim this isn’t happening. This leaked version was filmed using Crown’s own security cameras.”Wilkie said Crown’s alleged misconduct could only occur, and continue to occur, if the casino was confident it had political cover and if numerous agencies fail to do their jobs.

“This crisis at Crown is multinational, multi-jurisdictional and multi-agency. This is a demonstration of catastrophic failure on the part of the major parties, the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation, Victoria police, the Australian federal police, Border Force and the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (Austrac).”