The former chief financial officer of The Star Entertainment Group has accused the company of plotting to misconstrue the group’s financials and called out chief executive Robbie Cooke for allegedly hiding the extent of its debt struggles from the broader executive team.
Christina Katsibouba, whose resignation was suddenly announced late last month, told the Bell inquiry into the company’s culture that she had wanted to leave the group since about June last year after becoming increasingly uneasy about the way business was conducted.
The Star’s former chief financial officer has accused her former boss of failing to be transparent about its financial position. Credit: Steven Siewert
Adam Bell, SC, is conducting a second inquiry into The Star’s suitability to operate its Pyrmont casino after the regulator, the NSW Independent Casino Commission, said it was unconvinced the company had committed to enough cultural change since it was last disgraced by Bell’s first inquiry in 2022. Public hearings, with appearances from former and current executives at The Star, began on Monday and will run for the next three weeks.
Katsibouba is one of five executives who were promoted or kept their positions after holding senior positions when the struggling casino giant was dubbed by Bell a “case study of unethical conduct”.
Among a series of serious revelations on Tuesday, Katsibouba said The Star’s head of investor relations, Giovanni Rizzo, asked her to doctor the businesses’ half-year results in February so that $3.2 million in lost cash Star Sydney accidentally gave to its customers would be hidden.
“In November and December, the earnings were not quite the run rate of the earlier months. If this amount was presented as being booked during that period, it would appear to have been an otherwise good month,” she said when asked about the rationale for misconstruing when the broken machine loss occurred.
Katsibouba said Robbie Cooke was at the meeting and did not say anything to stop the suggestion to attribute the loss to December instead of June, but she did not comply.
The Star’s special manager, Nick Weeks, argued on Monday that the Sydney casino had failed to fix a broken “ticket in, cash out” machine that allowed customers to take out $3.2 million in cash they had not earned over a six-week period in June last year.
Katsibouba said she and Cooke disagreed on how transparent they should be with the broader executive team about the extent of the group’s debt position.
“Robbie and I didn’t necessarily agree on how much disclosure we should have with our leadership team. My view was that we should be fully transparent with them… so the minds of that team could all focus on developing a business plan to address earnings,” she said.
“We didn’t have any conversation about the vulnerabilities of the balance sheet and the debt with that group.”
Katsibouba said she first flagged her intention to leave on December 5 last year with then-boss Cooke because she felt she was treated unfairly. She also said she felt the company had mishandled the circumstances of her departure.
She told the inquiry she did not know Cooke had also resigned that day until it was announced to the ASX within an hour of her own resignation on March 22. She said she had wanted to include in the release that she’d been planning to leave for some time, but this request was rejected by executive chair David Foster, who said the context would upset the NSW regulator, which called the second Bell inquiry into its culture three days later.
“David said we couldn’t put [the suggestions] in because it would have put us in trouble with the regulator because the discussions should have been informed to the regulator from when it was clear I was going to step down ...” Katsibouba said.
Cooke is being represented by Brett Walker, SC, who questioned why Katsibouba had waited until late March to leave the business when she could have resigned at any time and asserted her motivations for remaining at the company were financial and within her control.
The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.