Crown Resorts’ Melbourne casino licence should be cancelled due to the company’s persistent misconduct, counsel assisting a royal commission in Victoria has recommended.
Adrian Finanzio, SC, told the commission Crown could also owe Victoria up to $480m after cheating on state taxes and had repeatedly breached the agreement under which it runs the casino by failing to properly tackle problem gambling.
Chair Helen Coonan and chief executive of Crown Melbourne Xavier Walsh were also not appropriate people to remain connected to the casino, given Crown’s pattern of misconduct, he said in closing submissions delivered on Tuesday.
The Victorian royal commission was called after a similar inquiry in New South Wales found that Crown was not suitable to hold the licence to run a new casino at Barangaroo, on Sydney harbour because it had facilitated money laundering at its casinos in Melbourne and Perth and organised crime was present in junkets that brought in high-rolling gamblers.
NSW’s inquiry, which also set out a pathway by which Crown might become suitable to hold the Barangaroo licence, was sparked by allegations of money laundering and criminal activity at the company’s casinos published by Nine Entertainment in July 2019.
Crown continued to be vulnerable to money laundering by criminals, he said.
He said Coonan and Walsh discussed the issue by phone on 23 February, the day after the premier, Daniel Andrews, called the royal commission
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