Cards on the table: James Packer must deal himself out of Crown

After three days of painful interrogation James Packer finally realised he had to sacrifice himself to save his company.

James Packer during the Crown inquiry on Thursday.

After more than eight hours of painful interrogation over three days, James Packer finally realised he had to sacrifice himself to save his company.

It came during a full and frank final discussion on Thursday afternoon with Patricia Bergin, the former NSW Supreme Court judge presiding over what has turned into a bombshell inquiry into casino giant Crown Resorts. Their exchange was intense, forensic and revelatory.

“The Crown board has a lot to think about in terms of who the right people are for the right jobs,’’ Packer said of Crown’s governance and how it could salvage its Sydney casino licence from the wreckage of recent weeks.

Lathered in sweat and sounding weary after another marathon three-hour interrogation, the billionaire delivered the killer line: that the company at the centre of his world for the past 22 years might have to go on without him.

“I think caps on shareholders may be something that you will think about.

“I think this has been a terribly painful and terribly shocking experience for the board. As it has been for me. I won’t be going on the board again. I think the board will be more independent than it was in the past,” he said.

Packer’s private company owns 36 per cent of Crown but under a secret deal negotiated after he left the board in March 2018 to deal with his mental health crisis, he has still been given reams of confidential information by Crown about its financial affairs.

That, he admitted, also had to go.

“I think there certainly shouldn’t be major shareholder provisions going forward,’’ he said.

He also accepted Bergin’s suggestion that he led the company with a “powerful personality” and as a result, people in the management ranks had too often wanted to please him.

After exchanging a joke with Bergin and for a moment flashing his biggest smile of the past three days, Packer then declared with reverence: “I think your ­recommendations are going to be listened to very carefully.”

The scene had been set for Packer’s concessions on Tuesday afternoon with the tabling of ­explosive emails that showed he threatened to put Israeli intelligence unit Mossad on to Melbourne businessman Ben Gray, the son of former Tasmanian Liberal premier Robin Gray, when a deal went bad in 2015.

Packer agreed the emails were shameful, disgraceful and totally unsuitable for a director of a casino company, but blamed them on his bipolar disorder.

They went directly to whether he is fit and proper to retain a controlling interest in Crown.

This hit on Packer’s character capped weeks of evidence revealing serious compliance failures at Crown, including dealings with offshore junket ­operators revealed as having links to organised crime and money laundering.

Packer on Thursday admitted he was one of the key driving forces in bringing Macau junket operators to Australia but said the Crown board had set no guidance with respect to its risk appetite for junkets when he was executive chairman.

One of Crown’s former directors, Macquarie Bank executive Ben Brazil, who took the stand later on Thursday, was asked about the arrest of Crown’s staff in China in late 2016, which also showed multiple risk management failures at the casino giant.

Brazil revealed he had “thumped the table” in the boardroom demanding a full and proper post-mortem on the ­arrests before he quit as a director in early 2017.

He claimed there had been some push back, especially to his suggestion that directors could also be culpable.

Strangely, Bergin halted Brazil in his tracks on his satisfaction with the post-mortem findings when Crown’s legal counsel ­interjected.

It will now be up to Crown’s current directors — including ad king Harold Mitchell and former AFL boss Andrew Demetriou, who will give evidence on Friday — to salvage something to save Crown’s Sydney licence.

Bergin was crystal clear in her summary that there were two key questions before her in the inquiry: one was whether Crown and its close associates were suitable to retain the licence, the other was if a recommendation were made to the NSW gaming regulator that found “unsuit­ability”, how would Crown make its operations suitable?

She suggested to Packer that some very serious changes needed be made. His response was crystal clear: “Absolutely.”