Austrac takes legal action against Crown Resorts, alleging breach of finance laws
Austrac has launched court action accusing James Packer’s Crown Resorts of breaching anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism finance laws and continuing to contravene the law due to wholly inadequate oversight by management.
In a lawsuit filed with the federal court on Tuesday, Austrac, Australia’s financial intelligence agency, said ongoing failures to properly vet risky customers – including those brought in from overseas by junket operators and locals with links to people already banned from Crown’s Melbourne and Perth casinos – accounted for 547 breaches of anti-money laundering laws.
Each alleged breach of the law if proven could attract a penalty of up to $22.2m, meaning Crown faces a fine that could theoretically exceed $12bn. However, if Austrac’s action succeeds, a far smaller penalty is likely. The current record fine is $1.3bn, which Westpac agreed to pay to settle allegations by Austrac that the bank breached AML/CTF laws more than 23m times, including by allowing a dozen customers to transfer money to the Philippines in a way consistent with child exploitation.
From March 2016, just 60 high-risk customers turned over $70bn at Crown’s casinos, pumping $1.1bn in losses into the company’s coffers, Austrac said in a concise statement filed with the court.
Austrac alleges that Crown failed to do appropriate due diligence on these customers, which it said included junket operators and players, foreign politically exposed people – a category that can include government officials and their families – as well as people who had been arrested for money laundering or were suspected of being “connected to organised crime”.
The regulator alleges that “many engaged in large cash transactions and transacted with cash that
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