Crown was warned on China, says Jason O’Connor

Former Crown high rollers boss Jason O’Connor was warned as early as March 2014 that the casino group should move its staff out of China.

Crown executive Jason O’Connor, who spent ten months in a Chinese jail in 2016 and 2017, appearing before the NSW Gaming inquiry. Picture: Supplied

Crown Resorts’ former international high rollers boss Jason O’Connor was warned as early as March 2014 that the James Packer-backed casino giant should move its staff out of China due to a government crackdown on gambling, but he did not pass the information to his superiors.

Speaking for the first time about the events that led up to his dramatic arrest in China in October 2016, Mr O’Connor was asked at the public inquiry into Crown on Wednesday about a text message he received on March 6, 2014 from Crown’s Melbourne-based vice president of international operations, Mr Veng Anh.

“Just a call from Xu with inside information from China, strictly silent. From April to May, Chinese government will begin to arrest a lot of anti-corruption people and anything to do with gambling or moving money out of the country. Warn us not to enter China at this time and should remove all our staffs out of the country for one month,’’ the text read.

Mr O’Connor said Mr Xu was a VIP customer and that he passed the warning onto Crown’s then president of international marketing Mr Michael Chen, who had received a similar warning from Mr Xu.

Acknowledging the text was concerning, Mr O’Connor said: “From time to time we did receive alarms or warnings, not quite of this nature, but of a similar nature.”

But asked if he passed the warning up the company hierarchy, he replied: “I don’t recall doing that.”
He also said the staff were not moved out of the country as the warning had suggested.

Mr O’Connor was released from a jail in Shanghai in August 2017, the last of three Australian Crown employees to be released following the completion of their sentences.

Nineteen Crown staffers were arrested in October 2016, with 16 of the 19 sentenced to fixed jail terms of nine and ten months and fined different amounts.

Their arrests put an end to an aggressive strategy of pursuing Chinese high rollers to come to Crown’s casinos in Melbourne and Perth to gamble.

While most of those arrested were Crown staffers working in China, the Melbourne based Mr O’Connor was detained on his way back to the airport during a visit to Shanghai.

Mr O’Connor was asked repeatedly at the inquiry about Crown’s associations with various Macau-based junket operators in the years leading up to his arrest.

But he denied he turned a blind eye to whether their backers had links to organised crime.

“I’ll admit at the time … not a lot of time was spent on considering what was going on behind those people,’’ he said of the junket promoters.

“The notion that there might be other people very active behind them was not something we were very well attuned to.”

He said while everybody had heard the accusations of triad involvement in Macau, it was unwise to assume they were involved in every junket operator in the Chinese province.

“Allegations are made but very rarely is there firm evidence to support it,’’ he said.

“Others had tried, we had tried, there was just no strong evidence that would justify deciding not to do business with these very large customers.”

He revealed at the inquiry that while he visited the Chinese mainland two or three times each year in his former role, he did not speak Chinese.

Mr O’Connor was also asked if he was involved in an internal investigation by Crown last year, following the publication of media reports alleging it did business with junket operators linked to organised crime and that money laundering had taken place through its casinos.

“No, not really,” he replied.

“I think I received a phone call at some point in time to provide some of my recollections and advice about the visa processing process that we had set up in China.”

He said the call came from Crown’s chief legal officer Josh Preston.

He said he had not been contacted by former Crown executive chairman John Alexander, Crown director Michael Johnston or Crown executive Karl Bitar as part of the investigation.

He said he ceased his previous role as group executive general manager VIP International the day he was arrested for committing gambling crimes in China, in October 2016. He subsequently spent 10 months in jail.

Mr O’Connor revealed he was currently working on Crown’s Sydney project in the role of director of innovation and strategy, reporting to its Australian casino boss Barry Felstead.

“So far I have been limited to helping through the operational planning process as we prepare to open the property in Sydney,’’ Mr O’Connor said, noting he no longer had any involvement with the company’s VIP strategies.

The inquiry heard that he entered into a deed of settlement with Crown Resorts on his return from China and had been released from a non-disparagement clause in the agreement for his appearance.

Earlier on Wednesday Crown’s chief legal officer admitted Crown staff in China raised concerns about dealing with “unsavoury types” through its partnership with the so-called “Hot Pot junket” until 2015, and said some were concerned about “harassment”, which inquiry head Patricia Bergin interpreted as “threats of physical violence” from “standover merchants”.

She said Crown appeared to have now accepted it had links to organised crime through Hot Pot junket promoter Ng Chi Un and that the company’s directors should have been informed of this link before releasing a statement last year dismissing the alleged links.

Mr O’Connor will continue giving evidence on Thursday.