The inquiry found the company had a culture of «not being truthful with the regulator, not taking their responsibilities around gambling harm and money laundering as seriously as they should,» she said.

She replied that she was ‘dealing with the report before us which deals with recommendations around casinos and there’s enough in this report to keep me busy, particularly with the finding of unsuitability. 

SYDNEY, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Australia’s Queensland poker pkv state declared casino operator Star Entertainment Ltd unsuitable for a gambling licence on Thursday after an inquiry found it concealed illegal Chinese wagering payments and lured problem gamblers from interstate.

«The two Star casinos presently carrying on business in Queensland (Star Gold Coast and Treasury Brisbane) have been operated in a way that is inconsistent with the achievement of the objectives of the Casino Control Act,» the report said.

«We have in black and white some damning findings about how this company has operated, how they dealt with the regulator, and their obligations to act in the public interest clearly were not taken seriously,» she told reporters on Thursday.

«As a consequence, some of the business that was drawn in placed the casinos at real jeopardy of infiltration by persons whom The Star had reason to suspect were likely to have been involved in criminality,» Mr Gotterson wrote.

«Today I have received the final report from the external review of the Queensland operations of The Star Entertainment Group from the Honourable Robert Gotterson KC,» Ms Fentiman said in a statement on Friday.

The driver is understood to have been an accomplished off-road driver who knew the site ‘like the back of his hand’, with roll-bars fitted to the off-road vehicle said to have prevented an even greater tragedy.

‘Two paramedic officers, four ambulances, two critical care paramedics from the Midlands Air Ambulance charity, HART paramedics and the Midlands Air Ambulance helicopter from Cosford with medics on board attended the scene.

‘A girl was given treatment at the scene for non-life threatening injuries before being conveyed to Worcestershire Royal Hospital.

A man, a woman and a second boy were also taken to the same hospital as a precaution for further checks.’

A shortened license period of 10 years from 20 years is also not a problem, Song said, as the government would re-allocate facilities and resources to Genting if it won a license, so they «don´t actually need to build everything from the ground.» ($1 = 7.8498 Hong Kong dollars) (Reporting by Farah Master Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

Since 2021, both Star and larger rival Crown Resorts, recently bought by Blackstone Inc, have been deemed unfit for a gambling licence in every state in which they operate, although neither company has so far been prohibited from operating in any jurisdiction.

In two of the three other states where the government has found the operator of an established casino unfit for a licence, it has allowed the company to keep taking bets under supervision. The third, Poker Pkv home to Star’s Sydney casino, is yet to make a decision.

It would cause «far too much disruption» if any of the six operators were replaced, said Terry Ng, an analyst at Daiwa in Hong Kong, although other industry watchers note the incumbents have left themselves vulnerable to an operator like Genting which lost out on a Macau licence in 2002.

Mr Gotterson found the company guilty of a serious dereliction of its anti-money laundering responsibilities, deliberately misled the regulator and had poor corporate culture with a ‘one-eyed focus’ on profit at the expense of patrons.

Mr Gotterson has made 12 recommendations to tighten controls in the state’s casino industry, including for venues to go cashless with patrons to use cards linked to their identification and set with loss limits before they start gambling.

The Queensland inquiry found Star concealed A$55 million in gambling payments by Chinese nationals by characterising them as hotel fees, breaching Chinese gambling restrictions and «deliberately misleading» Star’s bank, National Australia Bank Ltd.

HONG KONG, Sept 30 (Reuters) – Malaysian group Genting has emerged as a strong contender to unseat an incumbent Macau casino operator for a new license, analysts and executives say, unleashing possibly the biggest shakeup in the world´s largest gambling hub in over two decades.

Genting´s strong non-gaming track record, including operating two of the largest theme parks in southeast Asia, would be a big draw for Beijing which has been urging Macau to diversify away from gambling and attract foreign tourists.

«Macau has been told over and over again to focus less on Chinese VIPs and more on non-gaming but they pretty much paid lip service to that idea. So now… they have to really make a hard divert to that philosophy,» Yin said.

‘The Star does under the legislation have an opportunity, natural justice, to put forward a case about what should happen next so I don’t want to preempt that but it is open to government to cancel their license, to suspend their license,’ she said.