After undergoing significant investigations from gaming regulators over the last two years, Australia’s Star Casino in Sydney will remain open, but has incurred a $10 million fine. A relief for casino officials, considering penalties could have potentially included gaming license revocation and a much higher fine.
However, the New South Wales Independent Casino Commission (NICC) will allow the casino to keep operating, while reviewing the property’s new efforts to prevent money laundering and other financial crimes.
The NICC conducted investigations into the casino in 2022 and again in February, noting that the Star had “continuing compliance failures and operations that fell far short of suitability.”
“Despite more prescriptive supervision that prevented the type of misconduct seen in the first inquiry, numerous shortcomings in governance, regulatory compliance, technology and risk management remain, including in areas that The Star claimed it had remediated,” NICC Chief Commissioner Philip Crawford said.
Another Chance To Improve
The February report noted that the property made use of “false documents and misleading, untruthful and unethical communications” to banks as well as “deceptive and unethical” processes and a “failure to account for money laundering and counter-terrorism financing risks.”
Regulators have expressed reservations about revoking the casino’s license as thousands of jobs could be lost. The company now gets another chance to fall into compliance.
Star Entertainment also operates a casino on Australia’s Gold Coast as well as casinos and properties in other areas. The company has suffered financially including recently announcing a loss of A$1.7 billion ($1.1 billion U.S.) after losing A$2.4 billion ($1.6 billion U.S.) the previous year.
Star cited “challenging trading conditions” along with the regulatory concerns and moving to cashless gaming as reasons for the losses.
“We need to turn the business around, we need to arrest the current situation of negative EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization),” the company’s new CEO Steve McCann said in a recent earnings call. “We’re clearly running an inflated cost level, we’re working hard to get that under control. This business has been clearly on its knees.”