While ICAC has delivered bombshell evidence that has ensnared a standing NSW premier, a simultaneous inquiry unfolding in Sydney has exposed one of the most egregious examples of how business is done in Australia.
Led by former NSW judge Patricia Bergin SC, the inquiry into Crown has unearthed a laundry list of crimes and misdemeanors that makes Daryl Maguire’s wrongdoings seem petty.
Money laundering, junket operators linked to organised crime gangs, and secret bank accounts set up to avoid regulators were just some of the topics to receive airtime.
It’s forced some of Australia’s most powerful business identities to submit themselves to a level of scrutiny, interrogation and public humiliation that they’ve never experienced before. The dishevelled figure of James Packer dialing into the inquiry from his yacht off the coast of Tahiti resembled nothing of the business oligarch that once ruled the country with impunity.
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In many ways the Crown inquiry reveals corruption at a more sophisticated and endemic level than what’s been revealed at ICAC. While ICAC has given us brown paper bags of cash, Crown has showed us a much more pervasive problem: the gritty underbelly of corporate Australia, and how the political and bureaucratic elite can get co-opted in.
Crown is the story of a business titan who surrounded himself with power, only to watch it all come crashing down. Packer’s political connections have underpinned everything he’s created. Even on the surface, the billionaire has filled his empire with legions of well-connected members of the political class, including John Howard’s former cabinet minister Helen Coonan and former health secretary Jane “children overboard” Halton. Both sit on the Crown board.
The political connections don’t stop at the board. Crown’s advisers are Mark Arbib, the former federal minister and powerful Labor operative who quit politics in 2012 and swiftly joined Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings, and Karl Bitar, the former ALP national secretary who is now a senior corporate affairs executive at Crown.
Even as damning evidence was being aired at the inquiry last month, Crown poached a senior government gaming investigator, John Yates, as its new anti-money laundering adviser. Yates had until recently overseen a money laundering investigation on behalf of the government into the casino firm’s own high-roller operations.
Not even a star-studded board has been enough to bring the company back from the brink of catastrophe. Famed adman Harold Mitchell and former AFL boss Andrew Demetriou proved in many ways to be the weakest witnesses in the inquiry, showing ignorance or disregard about the basic duties of a director.
Packer has also surrounded himself with a close group of business confidantes, whose loyalty to the Packer dynasty has been key to its success — and downfall. We’ve watched as the empire folded in on itself, with Packer’s top lieutenants admitting they fed confidential information to Packer, revising financial forecasts at his request, and describing a corporate structure built on one massive conflict of interest.
For decades Packer has wielded power through political donations and the revenue flows from his casinos that have made governments afraid to stand up to him. Now the jewel in Packer’s crown — the Barangaroo development and casino licence — is on the line. If Crown and its directors had hoped to save the licence before their appearances at the inquiry, they will be far less confident now.
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Re the deal making and corruption in Australian government circles.
It is erhaps unfortunate that we haven’t taken a leaf from the Chinese government playbook on managing corruption, and just shoot those found guilty of official corruption. That might sort the problem and deter others.
I firmly believe that until some corporate criminals get actual jail time there will be no moment of reckoning. The banking royal commission revealed many instances of criminal behavour yet not one person has actually been punished.
Its been interesting to see some of these “Industry Captains”.
Some have come from the sheltered workshop that is sport, some from the highest levels of the Public Service and Government. All have shown that they aren’t equal to the job.
Especially the ones from the Public Service and Government. From them, at least one would have expected the same levels of probity we have always been told (and many of us actually practiced) that Government expects from its servants, has when most expected and tested, been sadly lacking.
If Jane Halton ran the children overboard campaign, then she was already pretty short of ethics. More of a ‘can do’ mentality.
Quid Pro Quo – emphasis on the quid.
We’re very unlikely to see a ‘For Sale – genuine offers only’ sign on Barangaroo any time soon. Yes, the enquiry will show us directors who fail to direct, who are selected to provide their contact list and a gossamer thin veil of respectability to a business that is soiled, greedy and unconcerned where the money comes from, as long as it comes to them. Gambling empires are not built on slot machines and public tables. They are built on whales who bring more zeros than a big telephone number, or criminals who walk in with shopping bags of cash and who care nothing for the cctv or rules. Barangaroo will continue to service those people, will continue to signal to all of Sydney that crime does pay, and will continue to blight the governance class – be they directors, premiers or regulators.
The UK shows us that money-laundering really is the way to go if you’ve run out of ideas as a country. There is zero political will to fight it in UK or Australia for sound economic reasons: political parties need donations, and viable businesses don’t need to make them.
“Narcotics: New report reveals colossal scale of trafficking and money laundering, much of it flowing through Britain”https://www.independent.co.uk/news/drugs-trade-the-third-largest-economy-1072489.html
Well somebody has to do, can’t leave that amount of money under floor boards.
Yet were it not illegal there would be no vast profits, “narcostates” nor a need for a large chunk of worldwide military apparatus.
I’m on a boat, you can’t catch me.
The fattest of fat cats. Back scratching their entitlement. Facititating money laundering. The ‘deserving’ rich goldern-handcuffed to off-planet yacht dwellers. Don’t rock that boat – one day it will all be yours.