James Packer’s Crown enlists former top cop Nick Kaldas to push for casino integrity group

Former NSW Police deputy commissioner to work with Packer-backed Crown Resorts to establish a new national integrity group for casinos.

Former NSW police deputy commissioner Nick Kaldas Picture: Nikki Short

A former deputy commissioner of New South Wales Police is working with the James Packer-backed Crown Resorts to establish a new national integrity group allowing the nation’s casinos, casino regulators and law enforcement bodies to share information on organised crime and other issues affecting the industry.

Nick Kaldas, who also worked for eight years with the Australian National Counter-Terrorism Committee, told a public inquiry into Crown and regulation of the casino industry on Tuesday that the idea for the new group came from Crown as part of a review of its compliance systems.

In January Mr Kaldas signed a consulting arrangement with Crown to provide independent advice to the casino company’s board through the risk management committee to help improve its anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism financ­ing compliance practices.

“It is simply facilitating connectivity between Crown and law enforcement agencies,’’ he told the inquiry about his role.

“I am also working on a process by which they may be able to carry out due diligence in China and other places.”

But he said a wider initiative, underway at Crown’s initiation, was the formation of an national industry group to share intelligence.

“One of the proposals is in relation to a committee or board that may bring together all the stakeholders to discuss issues of the day and look at solutions to deal with those issues,’’ Mr Kaldas said of the group, which would have a formal secretariat and membership.

“The vision would be that law enforcement, regulatory agencies and other government agencies that have an interest may be invited.”

He said the agencies involved needed to be both federal and state-based to make best use of national intelligence and state-based police forces.

Former Crown chief executive Rowen Craigie told the inquiry last month that allowing better co-operation between state gaming regulators, police and financial intelligence agency Austrac could be the key to preventing international organised crime infiltrating the nation’s casinos.

Mr Craigie said too often there was a significant lag between a casino or regulator detecting signs of possible money laundering through a casino and action being taken by law enforcement bodies.

The police commissioners in various states have a wide discretionary power to exclude a person from a casino in their state of jurisdiction without the need for them to be charged with or convicted of a criminal offence.

The inquiry over recent weeks has heard of Crown’s associations with junket operators linked to organised crime and highlighted how its casinos were used for money laundering.

The Crown board and its major shareholder Mr Packer, as well as executives of his private company Consolidated Press Holdings, are due to appear before the inquiry at the end of the month.

Mr Kaldas on Tuesday also revealed that Crown was considering establishing a number of new committees to improve its compliance processes, including fraud and whistleblowing committees.

He said the latter would be a “high level committee that makes sure processes are in place that the right steps are taken when a whistleblower comes forward.”