Star Entertainment defends itself on final day of Queensland inquiry
The integrity of Queensland’s casino operations were put in “serious jeopardy” by Star Entertainment’s “errors”, which allowed highrolling gamblers banned in other states to have a punt here, an inquiry has heard.
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The integrity of Queensland’s casino operations were put in “serious jeopardy” by Star Entertainment’s “errors”, which allowed highrolling gamblers banned in other states to have a punt on the Gold Coast and Brisbane.
The salvo from Jonathan Horton QC, counsel assisting, came on the final day of Queensland’s inquiry into embattled gaming giant Star Entertainment, whose suitability to hold a licence in the state has been put under the microscope over the last week.
But lawyers for Star Entertainment, making submissions in its defence, said the old loophole of people banned in other states being allowed into Queensland casinos reflected a “wrong way of approaching things” and wouldn’t happen again.
The inquiry had previously heard of two people who had been banned from NSW or Victorian venues, or both, for alleged links to criminal activity but were still able to pour millions into Star’s casino on the Gold Coast.
Known as Person 2, the patron had been banned from Melbourne’s Crown casino and NSW venues in 2014 and 2015, respectively, by police in those states but rose to become a “top 10 table player” and was not blocked from playing in Queensland until early 2021.
The other gambler, Person 1, was able to funnel between $10m and $15m into the Gold Coast Star casino over 15 years, also until 2021.
Mr Horton said a total of 768 people were banned from NSW casinos and according to Star’s numbers 36 of those people had gambled at Star’s Queensland locations in the last nine years, and 15 in the last five years though now all had been excluded.
“The errors place in serious jeopardy the integrity of Queensland’s casino operations,” Mr Horton said.
Star’s lawyer Gareth Beacham QC said the gaming giant accepted its old exclusion policy, which functioned between 2007 and 2019, was “a wrong way of approaching things” based on an “incorrect legal understanding”.
He said at the time people banned in other states were not automatically excluded from having a punt in Queensland because Star’s legal advice was that evidence used by authorities in other states to justify banning people may not have been admissible in a Queensland court.
“We’d say that a piece of evidence wasn’t available or admissible … to use in Queensland to justify the exclusion,” Mr Beacham said.
“So Star knew, but it had to go and try to find some other evidence to justify its exclusion.”
Mr Beacham, defending Star, said the organisation accepted its anti-money laundering efforts were “seriously deficient” at the time of a 2018 KPMG review, but improvements and changes meant by the time of another review — by BDO in 2021 — the gambling giant’s policies were “effective”.
Mr Horton said the case against Star’s deficient anti-money laundering policies extended to “more recently” than March 2021, pointing to the “concrete facts” from five case studies presented to the inquiry which should be used as a “real test” of when Star’s policies actually worked — “if at all”.
This included Person 1 walking into a Star casino in Queensland on March 25 last year with a Chemist Warehouse branded plastic bag full of cash.
Inquiry head former Justice Robert Gotterson is due to hand down his report to the government by September 30.
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