Crown Resorts chair Helen Coonan and board to appear in front of Victorian royal commission next week

In the last week of the Victorian inquiry’s hearings, the face of Crown’s reform efforts will make the case for its rehabilitation.

Helen Coonan in front of Crown’s Sydney building. Picture: Adam Yip

Crown Resorts executive chairman Helen Coonan will appear in front of the Victorian royal commission into the company next week and spruik its reform process, while dispelling a perception she withheld information about a potential $272m tax underpayment issue from the Crown board.

The commission will also hear evidence from Crown directors Toni Korsanos and Jane Halton, as well as Crown Melbourne CEO Xavier Walsh, group CFO Alan McGregor and the company’s new chief executive, former Lendlease boss Steve McCann. It will be the probe’s last week of hearings.

Ms Coonan, a director of Crown for a decade, was appointed to the top job earlier this year after the NSW Bergin inquiry determined Crown was temporarily unsuitable to run its Sydney casino, in part due to money-laundering concerns and the influence of major shareholder James Packer on its operations.

In the months since, she has prosecuted an aggressive reform campaign of Crown’s culture and money-laundering systems and has worked to sever formal and informal links between the company and Mr Packer.

Her efforts have gained praise from the chair of the NSW gaming regulator, Philip Crawford, who has said Crown Sydney could open before the end of the year.

But Victorian commissioner Raymond Finkelstein has been openly suspect of the reform efforts and the true extent of cultural change, telling the commission on Thursday he wasn’t convinced of its genuine intent.

“This is not voluntary behaviour where a bunch of people woke up in the morning and said: ‘Oh, we’ve been doing really bad stuff, and we’ll fix it’,” Mr Finkelstein said.

“They are being hounded by governments and regulators and they are fighting for their lives. What choice do they have?”

One issue that has become a sticking point for the commission was the revelation that Crown may have underpaid its Victorian state gaming tax by almost $170m.

The news came as a shock to the commission and the Crown board, but intensified when the inquiry last week heard Ms Coonan knew of the issue in February, that some Crown managers knew of the issue for years, and that the size of the potential underpayment could be more than $272m.

It is viewed as likely Ms Coonan will tell the commission next week that she, like the other board members, wasn’t made aware of the extent or the relevance of the underpayment when she first heard of it from Mr Walsh.

In a statement last week, Ms Coonan said Mr Walsh told her it was a “legacy” issue, but she still immediately ordered it to be reviewed and disclosed to the commission.

“On February 23, 2021, Xavier Walsh raised with me a legacy issue of a potential problem with state casino tax,” Ms Coonan said.

“This was the first I had heard of it.

“I directed him to get the information together and give it to the lawyers for advice and disclosure to the commission.”

It is also viewed as likely that other Crown directors like Ms Halton and Ms Korsanos will tell the commission they had knowledge of the issue prior to its revelation at the commission, but that they also didn’t know the extent of the problem.

Crown’s lawyers Allens have owned up to being responsible for not informing the commission of the tax issue.