Countless violations lead to record fines
AUSTRAC, the Australian financial crime regulator, is now said to be 546 violations of anti-money laundering laws [Article on English], as summarized by the news.com.au portal.
The $450 million fine for the violations would be the largest ever paid by a gaming company anywhere in the world. It is expected that the penalty will be payable in several tranches.
AUSTRAC's lawyer, Michael Hodge, told the court that it was impossible to determine the full extent of Crown's breaches and spoke of a failure on the part of the provider to comply with the law - regardless of the motivation behind it.
Crown's breaches of the [Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act] allowed a number of obviously high-risk practices, behaviors and customer relationships to continue unchecked for many years. – Nicole Rose, AUSTRAC, source: news.com.au
According to AUSTRAC, the casino industry in general poses a risk of becoming a target for organized crime who want to launder their illegally earned money. In the case of Crown, it is suspected that this may have happened on a large scale.
In particular, Crown's connection to the so-called junket operators, who serve VIP guests with high stakes, has often been criticized in the past. This meant that Crown had to officially say goodbye to this business model in 2020
In total, there have been 60 very conspicuous customers in recent years, including 43 junket operators, accounting for total sales of $69 billion. The accusation is that Crown did not proceed diligently in its risk assessment of these customers.
This is the casino company Crown
The company behind the Crown brand is Crown Resorts Limited, an Australian company based in Melbourne. The listed group employsigt around 15,000 people and operates various casinos and hotels.
In addition to the casinos in Melbourne and Perth, Crown Aspinall's in London also belongs to the group of companies. Dozens of other investments are listed in the consolidated financial statements.
The current allegations are not the first against the company. The company was even sued explicitly in relation to money laundering in 2021 and was forced to pay a fine in the double-digit million range.
Is Crown charting a new course?
Crown management has now admitted that it violated the law. The official statement is that you have Failure to properly assess, identify and respond to the risks of money laundering [Article on English].
The people responsible at the time no longer work for Crown. The new management now wants to bear the consequences for “past failures”. [Article on English] and look forward.
Money laundering and terrorist financing have no place at Crown […]. – Ciarán Carruthers, CEO of Crown, Source: The Guardian
It remains to be seen how Crown will be able to cope with the certainly not insignificant financial damage associated with the fine. On the other hand, it will be interesting to see whether Crown will actually take a new path in the future and whether the draconian punishment will have the deterrent effect that AUSTRAC is probably hoping for.
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