Chau’s Australian business flourished between 2012 and 2019, helping to earn him enough capital to finance action movies in Hong Kong and major casino projects in Russia and Asia. Use this portal to access and manage your land tax information. But having been effectively called out as an organised crime enabler in Australia, the clock was ticking on Chau.
Gaming watchdog urges Premier to call pokies money-laundering inquiry
Last week, the director of operations at Sun Stud, David Grant, described allegations that Chau part-owned Sun Stud as a “long bow”. In September, corporate filings reveal that Chau offloaded his last Sun Stud holding to Cheng via a British Virgin Islands company. Official sources not authorised to comment publicly say ACIC investigations into Cheng allege he is involved in “orchestrating large-scale money-laundering activity in Australia and the sourcing and distribution of heroin both in Hong Kong and overseas”.
According to ACIC, Cheng is a senior figure in the powerful Chinese organised crime gang, the 14K Triad. Cheng was investing in many of Chau and Suncity’s corporate subsidiaries via offshore companies. By 2017, according to official sources in state and federal agencies – who requested anonymity because they are not authorised to speak publicly – ACIC had drawn a direct line between Chau and a Hong Kong crime boss, Cheng Ting Kong. As organised crime detectives in Sydney and Melbourne uncovered similar examples, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission began doing its own work. online pokies When federal detectives examined his financial dealings, they uncovered a $403,000 deposit into a gaming account at The Star Sydney. As Chau’s international gaming operation grew, though, so did the rumours that it involved dirty money.
The Sydney Morning Herald
And on December 1, the Suncity high-roller travel business ceased its casino operations in Macau, the place where it all began. On November 28, Macau police remanded him in custody to face trial for alleged criminal association, illegal gambling, money laundering and running an illegal online gambling operation in the Philippines. Under Australian corporate law, international businesses need an Australian resident director to oversee their corporate and tax obligations, and Brogan appears to have fulfilled that role. By the late 2000s, almost every major Macau casino had a Suncity high-roller room where Chau’s clients could gamble huge amounts in luxury settings, away from the prying eyes of mainland authorities. The Triad leader reportedly encouraged a friend to bankroll Chau’s initial business venture, a “junket” enterprise focused on luring Chinese high rollers from the mainland to glittering casinos in Macau.
But the accountant, who retired from PwC in 1995 and is paid a yearly partners’ fee by the giant consulting firm, appears to have contracted PwC to provide Suncity a corporate address and tax services. In 2017, ACIC’s chief Phelan informed his board of police and spy chiefs that it had listed Cheng as an “Australian priority organisation target”, a designation reserved for those posing the greatest organised crime threat to Australia. Anti-money-laundering agency Austrac, which also has a representative on the ACIC board, warned last year in a heavily redacted report that high-roller operations were also suspected of funding foreign interference operations. It’s headed by a former senior federal police officer, Mike Phelan, and is guided by board members who include AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess and the heads of state and territory policing agencies. ACIC exists to feed high-grade intelligence to state and federal agencies.
Chau had even been appointed to a prestigious CCP committee, a seemingly quiet endorsement of his operations. For years, the Chinese Communist Party had allowed Chau to build his junket empire, even though it appeared to conflict with the party’s anti-gambling edicts. The public reporting of Chau’s activities in Australia at the NSW Bergin inquiry and at the Finkelstein royal commission in Victoria placed Chinese authorities in a bind. As it looked into Suncity operatives behind closed doors, ACIC also provided information about the company to the state commissions of inquiry into Crown Resorts that, along with media exposés, led to the overhaul of Crown and Australia’s gambling industry. “Coercive examinations are one of the tools we use to exert maximum pressure on all levels of the criminal enterprise,” he said.
- It also confirmed that until March 2020, it had “performed some small routine annual tax work for this the Suncity group of companies”.
- And on December 1, the Suncity high-roller travel business ceased its casino operations in Macau, the place where it all began.
- Anti-money-laundering agency Austrac, which also has a representative on the ACIC board, warned last year in a heavily redacted report that high-roller operations were also suspected of funding foreign interference operations.
- In 2017, ACIC’s chief Phelan informed his board of police and spy chiefs that it had listed Cheng as an “Australian priority organisation target”, a designation reserved for those posing the greatest organised crime threat to Australia.
Vacant residential land tax portal
The Macau-headquartered and Chau-owned “Suncity Gaming” had, according to intelligence briefings ACIC provided NSW and Victorian police, “significant capabilities to facilitate large-scale money laundering between Australia and China”. Over a year earlier, ACIC had added Chau’s junket business – the Suncity firm dealing with Crown and The Star and which was generating billions of dollars in high-roller turnover – to its Australian priority target list. It is not suggested that Brogan was personally involved in any wrongdoing or criminal activity, only that he is involved with Suncity.
But the full story of Chau and his gambling junket operation, Suncity, is also a tale of financial and organised crime in Australia, and the work of a mostly hidden federal agency, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission. Sydney’s The Star Entertainment casino firm was just as eager to woo Chau to access his contact list of Chinese high rollers. But in a statement, ACIC chief Phelan confirmed his agency was increasingly using its compulsory interrogation powers to disrupt criminal operations and had also jailed three unnamed individuals who had failed to answer questions at secret hearings. Sources have confirmed that during this time, ACIC was able to develop an unprecedented overview of Suncity’s operations, including how it had helped suspected Chinese criminals move huge sums to and from Australia.
On November 27, staff working for the most colourful man in international gambling were led out of his Macau office handcuffed and wearing black hoods. Access and manage your vacant residential land tax information.