Comment: Our pokies culture is un-Australian and it needs to stop now

The public reporting of Chau’s activities in Australia at the NSW Bergin inquiry and at the Finkelstein royal commission in Victoria placed Chinese authorities in a bind. Anti-money-laundering agency Austrac, which also has a representative on the ACIC board, warned last year in a heavily redacted report that high-roller operations were also suspected of funding foreign interference operations. As organised crime detectives in Sydney and Melbourne uncovered similar examples, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission began doing its own work. Three years ago, as Chau reached the height of his powers in Australia, the commission began squeezing his empire.

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But the accountant, who retired from PwC in 1995 and is paid a yearly partners’ fee by the giant consulting firm, appears to have contracted PwC to provide Suncity a corporate address and tax services. It is not suggested that Brogan was personally involved in any wrongdoing or criminal activity, only that he is involved with Suncity. Several of Chau’s companies in Australia, including the Suncity Group, had a former PricewaterhouseCoopers partner, Stanley Brogan, as a director. Under Australian corporate law, international businesses need an Australian resident director to oversee their corporate and tax obligations, and Brogan appears to have fulfilled that role. Corporate filings show he remains listed as a director of at least two Suncity Australian companies. ACIC exists to feed high-grade intelligence to state and federal agencies.

View our latest partner offers to claim exclusive offers, discounts and more, with thanks to our generous sponsors. The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Over a year earlier, ACIC had added Chau’s junket business – the Suncity firm dealing with Crown and The Star and which was generating billions of dollars in high-roller turnover – to its Australian priority target list.

We are a global entertainment and gaming content creation company, powered by technology and focused on sustainability. We offer a diverse range of products including our industry leading land-based casino games, hardware and systems, online real-money gaming, iLottery as well as our free-to-play social casino games. Poker machines are the main form of gaming machine in only 35 countries around the world. But Australia, led by NSW, is odd in allowing these machines into family venues like pubs and clubs. Only a quarter of countries with poker machines let them operate outside of casinos, gambling halls and other dedicated gambling venues. It’s no surprise that Western Australia has the lowest gambling expenditure.

With Chau now in a Macau holding cell and Suncity a shadow of its former self in Australia, it appears the secret strategy has worked. The gaming giant had called off negotiations on an earlier proposal after failing to agree on key details of a plan to sell its Brisbane project. Epic Games accused Apple and Google of monopolising the app market in a set of landmark cases that will affect every company selling digital goods. Millennial tycoon Ed Craven has been blasted by the Canadian rapper, unhappy about restrictions on sharing product links and difficulties withdrawing funds.

Cheng was investing in many of Chau and Suncity’s corporate subsidiaries via offshore companies. In late 2012, the Australian Federal Police arrested a Sydney man and charged him with laundering suspected drug funds. When federal detectives examined his financial dealings, they uncovered a $403,000 deposit into a gaming account at The Star Sydney. A report written by an overseas enforcement agency reveals that when detectives quizzed the man, he indicated these funds were bound for Suncity. Chau’s Australian business flourished between 2012 and 2019, helping to earn him enough capital to finance action movies in Hong Kong and major casino projects in Russia and Asia.

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The situation in NSW is not normal and the fight to remove pokies from community life needs to continue. A detailed breakdown of Australia’s betting habits was covered extensively in last week’s release on Australia’s betting habits available to view here. Crown Perth Casino operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week with the exception of three days per year. Learn how setting a limit can add to a better gambling experience. For more information on our available Crown PlaySafe tools and how we can assist, click below.

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Casino chips are also accepted when ordering beverages at the gaming tables or gaming machines. But having been effectively called out as an organised crime enabler in Australia, the clock was ticking australia online pokies on Chau. For years, the Chinese Communist Party had allowed Chau to build his junket empire, even though it appeared to conflict with the party’s anti-gambling edicts. Chau had even been appointed to a prestigious CCP committee, a seemingly quiet endorsement of his operations. According to ACIC, Cheng is a senior figure in the powerful Chinese organised crime gang, the 14K Triad. By 2017, according to official sources in state and federal agencies – who requested anonymity because they are not authorised to speak publicly – ACIC had drawn a direct line between Chau and a Hong Kong crime boss, Cheng Ting Kong.

We use dedicated people and clever technology to safeguard our platform. Labeled Verified, they’re about genuine experiences.Learn more about other kinds of reviews. Football, meat pies, kangaroos and gambling – there’s nothing more Australian.

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ACIC watched with alarm as Cheng and Chau bought and expanded Victoria’s Eliza Park Horse Stud, which breeds champion racehorses for wealthy owners. In September, corporate filings reveal that Chau offloaded his last Sun Stud holding to Cheng via a British Virgin Islands company. Official sources not authorised to comment publicly say ACIC investigations into Cheng allege he is involved in “orchestrating large-scale money-laundering activity in Australia and the sourcing and distribution of heroin both in Hong Kong and overseas”.