Jason O’Connor, former head of Crown Resorts’ international high-roller business, testified before a New South Wales inquiry panel on September 3 that the Australian company pressured him and his team to market a new VIP casino to gamblers in China, though it is illegal to promote gaming on the mainland.
O’Connor told officials that profit may have overcome caution on Crown’s part; he was the highest ranking among 19 staffers working in China when law enforcement rounded up and arrested the team in October 2016. The employees were held for 10 months in a Shanghai detention center, then released and deported.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, in 2015, after the Chinese government announced a crackdown on foreign casinos promoting gambling on the mainland, another VIP executive, Howard Aldridge wrote O’Connor asking if they should be concerned about their China-based staff.
O’Connor responded that he was “very concerned,” but that the “challenge would be convincing our masters that they need to temper their expectations.”
“With the development plans ahead, talk of conservative expectations won’t be well received,” he wrote. Under questioning, O’Connor said “development plans” was a reference to Crown’s new Sydney casino, which it planned to rely heavily on Chinese higher rollers.
“I thought at the time there was something of a disconnect between the business volumes and profits our business unit was able to deliver relevant to what was expected,” he told the inquiry.
O’Connor said he was concerned about the safety of Crown staff, but was reassured by a Beijing law firm that his team’s activities were within the law.
“I’ll be the first to concede that we overlooked some of the signals,” O’Connor told the NSW panel. “I didn’t fully appreciate the Chinese legal system doesn’t operate the way the western system does.”
Commissioner Patricia Bergin said that “getting caught up in the pressure to chase profit” appeared to be a major factor in Crown not realizing the risks it was taking.
“It may have blinkered some, yes,” O’Connor said.
The inquiry also looked at internal Crown documents that linked some junket operators the company worked with to triad criminal gangs.
“Is it right, Mr. O’Connor that you just really didn’t care about the probity of the junket operators with which your dealt?” asked assistant counsel Naomi Sharp.
O’Connor conceded “some of these customers appear to have links” that Crown’s due diligence processes didn’t pick up. “There does appear to have been failures in our processes; that’s been laid pretty clear.”
The NSW Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority’s inquiry is investigating whether senior Crown executives and the firm’s board knew staff were breaking the law in China; hanging in the balance is Crown’s right to hold a license in Sydney. O’Connor is still with Crown, as part of the team planning to open that property.
