Crown Resorts executives to face court in China

JASON O’Connor and his fellow Australian colleagues have just found out how long they will spend in a Chinese jail, after pleading guilty today.

Jason O’Connor, Crown’s general manager for VIP internationals, is one of three Australians facing court.

JASON O’Connor and his fellow Australian colleagues from Crown may well be home for Christmas.

According to media reports, the trio have just found out how long they will spend in a Chinese jail, after pleading guilty today.

Mr O’Connor, from Melbourne, was sentenced to 10 months, while Beijing-based international marketing director Jerry Xuan and colleague Pan Dan were sentenced to nine months, the ABC reports.

The trio has been in custody since October last year, but were only charged earlier this month with the illegal promotion of gambling on the Chinese mainland.

They faced court today in Shanghai, along with 16 other current and former employees of James Packer’s casino empire.

Facing the prospect of a maximum three years’ jail if convicted, along with the knowledge of China’s notoriously high conviction rate of 99 per cent, the high-flying executives faced a nailbiting wait to learn what their future will hold.

It is understood that some family members and Australian consular officials attended the trial at the Baoshan District Court, but media were not allowed inside the courtroom.

The hearing was not initially expected to involve a verdict or a sentence, with family members told to expect a wait of several weeks before finding out if their loved ones would be coming home.

The sentence is believed to include time already served, meaning that Mr O’Connor could be home by August, and the other two Australian men would be freed as early as next month.

China is in the midst of a crackdown on the promotion of gambling on the island of Macau, where Crown’s joint venture hosted businessmen, officials and high rollers from the mainland.

For several years, foreign casinos have been engaged in an increasingly high- stakes race to lure the lucrative Chinese VIP market, skirting Chinese law that strictly forbids the promotion of gambling.

Since the detentions, Crown has scaled back its Chinese ambitions, selling down its stake in the Macau-based joint venture Melco Crown, before offloading its final stake in Melco Resorts & Entertainment for $987 million.

The Packer-controlled gambling giant has also faced a number of changes with its chief executive Rowen Craigie departing in February and most recently, its director and former chairman Rob Rankin stepping down from the board.

Crown Resorts shares fell to a year-low of $9.71 following the detentions in October, but were trading at $12.65 up 0.79 per cent at Friday’s close.