Star Entertainment Qld Limited wins $43m legal stoush with Singaporean gambler Yew Choy Wong

The cash-strapped casino giant behind the $3.6bn Queen’s Wharf precinct has won a long-running legal stoush with a Singaporean gambler who bounced a $43m cheque.

The cash-strapped casino giant behind the $3.6bn Queen’s Wharf precinct has won a long-running legal stoush with a Singaporean gambling baron who bounced a $43m cheque.

In Brisbane Supreme Court on Monday, Justice Melanie Hindman ruled that casino high roller Yew Choy Wong must pay The Star Entertainment Qld Limited $38,659,853 plus interest and indemnity costs over the 2018 bounced cheque.

Singaporean gambler Yew Choy Wong outside a Brisbane court in August. Picture: Tertius Pickard

Her decision brings to an end one of the world’s biggest gambling debt recovery cases, and came after a three-day hearing last month where the court heard The Star Gold Coast in Broadbeach Island alleged Dr Wong was given access to a $40 million cheque cashing facility (CCF) on July 26, 2018, the day he arrived at the casino to play in a baccarat tournament while on a seven-day junket.

Dr Wong left the country without settling his account with the casino.

The casino says it used a signed blank personal cheque from the Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited that Dr Wong had given to its sister casino in Sydney a year earlier to pay the debt, arguing Dr Wong had given the Gold Coast casino permission to use the blank Sydney cheque, a claim he denied.

When casino staff presented the $43m cheque to the National Australia Bank in the Gold Coast suburb of Bundall, it bounced.

The court heard the placing of a blank cheque by high rollers is “a common process within casinos”.

Dr Wong told the court, and Justice Hindman accepted, that he instructed his bank in August 2018 to “stop payment on any cheques from The Star”.

Dr Wong actually racked up net gaming losses of $47.3m at baccarat between July 26, 2018 and August 2, 2018, but this was slashed to $43m after rebates and other allowances under the special junket agreement.

“The Star GC has made out its claim for recovery of the CCF moneys as loans, and Dr Wong has not made out any pleaded defence to that claim. I will enter judgment for The Star GC, with interest and costs,” Justice Hindman ruled.

“The pleaded defence is not supported by the evidence and therefore must be rejected as not being proved,” she stated.

The Star Casino on the Gold Coast. Photo: Regi Varghese

Mr Wong unsuccessfully argued on July 30, 2018, he and Star, through its chief operating officer, Paul Arbuckle, verbally agreed in a discussion about casino dealers making mistakes that Dr Wong would not have to pay for any losses incurred to that date and that Dr Wong would resume gaming.

Dr Wong also claimed that Mr Arbuckle agreed if Star’s dealers made any further mistakes in dealing baccarat to Dr Wong, he would not have to pay for losses incurred from that point on, during that visit.

Dr Wong gave evidence that he told Mr Arbuckle: “If you make one further mistake, I won’t pay any single cent” and he believed that entitled him to not pay the casino if dealers made any mistakes.

Mr Arbuckle gave evidence of two different contexts in which those words were spoken; the first being that Dr Wong would not pay a single cent “unless” Mr Arbuckle changed an August 1 apology letter he wrote to him, and that Dr Wong was talking about “hands on which the errors had occurred”.

In 2020 Dr Wong unsuccessfully applied to the Supreme Court to have a lawsuit filed against him dismissed on the grounds that it had low prospects of success to warrant him defending the claim.

Dr Wong, who made his fortune in online gambling in the Philippines and the Isle of Man, is alleged to have failed to reply to pre-trial letters in October and December 2018 demanding repayment of the gambling debt.

The Star also tried to recoup the money in a Singapore court but the case was thrown out.