Ex-Crown director John Poynton tells WA commission of 30-minute board meetings

Audits of the Perth casino’s anti-money laundering processes were cut just as Asian organised crime groups were increasing their laundering efforts.

Former long-serving Crown Resorts board member John Poynton arrives at the Perth Casino Royal Commission on Wednesday. Picture: Colin Murty

The Crown subsidiary responsible for the Perth casino through which hundreds of millions of dollars were allegedly laundered routinely held board meetings lasting less than half an hour.

And the same board also opted to change the frequency of external audits of its anti-money-laundering processes from every two years to every five years, just as Asian organised crime groups were increasing their efforts to launder cash through the venue.

Former Crown director John Poynton – who also spent 16 years on the board of the Crown subsidiary with oversight of the Perth casino, Burswood Limited – was grilled on Wednesday by Western Australia’s royal commission into the venue. The royal commission is scrutinising the suitability of Crown to hold WA’s only casino licence.

During lengthy and at times tense questioning from counsel assisting Patricia Cahill, Mr Poynton – one of WA’s most influential business figures – repeatedly said he had no reason to believe he was receiving inadequate information about the ­issues facing the Perth casino while serving on the Burswood Limited board. Both internal and external audits had signed off on the quality of the casino’s anti-money-laundering efforts.

“The information I was receiving was sufficient for me to form a view that there were no red flags requiring my intervention,” he said.

Ms Cahill noted that during 2013, the Burswood Limited board held two board meetings of only 26 minutes in length, another meeting of 28 minutes, and a fourth of 34 minutes.

The length of the meetings and the flow of information to other directors, Mr Poynton said, was driven by the subsidiary’s chairmen, firstly James Packer and then John Alexander.

“There were people in very senior roles sitting alongside me as a director who were in a much, much stronger position to determine whether management could be relied upon,” he said.

He noted that the length of the meetings had increased after he became chairman of Burswood Limited in 2018, as the issues faced by both the casino and Crown increased.

The Burswood Limited board in 2010 also endorsed a move to reduce the frequency of external audits of the casino’s efforts to tackle money laundering.

Mr Poynton said that audit and risk committees within Crown itself continued to have responsibilities for compliance with anti-money-laundering laws.

“I don’t agree that a five-year review, based on all the other information was a problem at the time. Subsequently it absolutely proved to be a problem,” Mr Poynton said. The group’s potential issues with money-laundering began to surface from around 2018, the same year that Mr Poynton moved onto the board of Burswood’s parent company, Crown Resorts.

He said it became clear then that Crown’s anti-money-laundering team was under-resourced and lacking in appropriately qualified executives. The company then started to “scramble” to catch up.

“It was clear by that time that notwithstanding the numerous efforts of the company to address that, and which there were many, that it was a fair observation that they obviously had not been able to do their job as well as they should have,” Mr Poynton said.

“That was something the company then addressed as a matter of urgency.”

He defended his lack of knowledge about the existence of the Burswood Limited subsidiary Riverbank Investments and the associated Riverbank ­accounts that were involved in the alleged money laundering.

Asked by Ms Cahill if his failure to know about Riverbank was a failure on his part to ask the right questions of management and hold them to account, Mr Poynton said he did not know what question he could have asked.

“We rely on management to provide us information to carry out our duties as a director, and if they don’t tell us that there is a subsidiary company that subsequently is a problem, then I’m not sure, other than relying on management and fellow directors who are more deeply enmeshed in the company, what I as a director could do,” he said.

“How do you ask something about which you know nothing?”

Burswood director Maryna Fewster, who is also the chief executive of Seven West Media in WA, will appear before the commission on Thursday.

She will be followed on Friday by Perth billionaire and former Burswood director Tim Roberts.