It’s welcome news that the Federal Court has handed down penalties to two former executives of Star Entertainment for their breaches of the Corporations Act in relation to a Chinese money laundering scandal. This included fines and disqualification orders, meaning neither executive can manage a corporation for a period of time.
Alarmingly, this kind of individual accountability never happened in the case of Crown Casino. This was despite piles of hard evidence of egregious wrongdoing, including whistleblower revelations and video footage of a freezer bag full of cash being laundered.
But despite today’s award of individual penalties, the fact remains that casinos attract trouble and need to be much better overseen and regulated. That a series of federal governments have been deaf to my calls for an independent national casino regulator says much about their continuing cozy relationships with the gambling industry.