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Star Entertainment’s interim boss is “not aware” of the casino operator paying any fines for its breaches of Queensland’s laws over the last five years.
The casino operator’s interim chief executive Geoff Hogg admits Star has been responsible for “a number of minor breaches” since 2017.
He says most of those breaches have been incidents such as a patron exclusion or “a staff error on tables”.
Hogg says he “can’t recall” Star paying any fines or being prosecuted by the state government for any breaches.
“Certainly we’ve obviously focused on remediation steps that we can do when we have any breaches or anything that occurs, and it’s been a focus for us. I’m not aware of any fines,” he told a parliamentary inquiry on Monday.
That inquiry is vetting proposed casino laws that would force operators to self-report legal breaches, expand the government’s power to gather information about casino operations and impose penalties of up to $50 million for breaches.
Hogg revealed the government told Star about the proposed laws and asked them for responses before they were tabled in parliament.
He said Star didn’t make any comments about the new fines being proposed or the size of them.
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“We had a notification that was considerations, I suppose of key themes and messages around it for which we got to respond,” Hogg said.
“At that stage we hadn’t seen the bill itself for its drafting, but we have given feedback and support to most of the changes.”
The chief executive said he assumed the government would have consulted all casino operators in Queensland about the bill beforehand.
When asked if he was confident activities and concerns raised in the NSW inquiry into Star had not occurred in Queensland, Hogg said the company was working to improve its anti-money laundering policies.
“We’ve been focusing on improving our policies now over the last three or four years, once we realised there were some gaps in what we’re doing that would apply in both areas, and committed to fixing those and addressing those which we’ve done over the last four years,” he said.
Hogg added Star’s anti-money laundering controls needed to be consistent, so any changes in NSW “need to be made also here in Queensland”.
The proposed laws could be passed before the opening of the $3.6 billion Queen’s Wharf in Brisbane next year.
The development’s casino will be operated by Star subsidiary Star Brisbane.
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The parliamentary inquiry comes ahead of a Commission of Inquiry into the suitability of Star to hold a casino licence in Queensland.
Former justice Robert Gotterson will investigate Star’s commitment to anti-money laundering, its management of high rollers and the use of China UnionPay bank cards to facilitate gambling by Chinese nationals despite currency restrictions.
With AAP. (Content has been tweaked a bit for style and length.)
Jaw de Guzman is the content producer for Comms Room, a knowledge platform and website aimed at assisting the communications industry and its professionals.
