One of the most influential and morally sinister industries in Australia might be engaging in a little bit of corruption in order to get what they want, it has been reported.
News investigations, inquiries and Royal Commissions are popping up everywhere across Australia, as Crown Casino finally starts to get some bad press – just six years after they forced the NSW government to shut down every single nightclub in Sydney on the grounds of ‘anti-social behaviour’.
Last night saw yet another ABC Four Corners exposè on the brazen corruption of Australia’s major gambling and entertainment groups. This time it’s about money laundering in their venues and why the gambling watchdogs can’t do shit about it.
This follows at least three different reports into just how loose the Casino game is in Australia, and how politicians are now pretending that they never knew.
As was reported by Four Corners earlier in the year, Crown’s new Sydney casino was suspended after an inquiry in NSW found it enabled money laundering in its bank accounts.
On top of this, the Victorian royal commission has also discovered a separate money laundering scandal last week.
The Western Australian government also called a royal commission to investigate the Perth Casino.
Crown Resorts claim to have called an immediate inquiry into claims made by journalists that alleged fugitives, including suspected human traffickers, have laundered millions of dollars through its Melbourne casino,
This comes a day after it was revealed that Executives from Crown Resorts kept a potential $270m tax rort from the regulator because they assumed it would not be discovered, until the Victorian Royal Commission was called into just how red hot of an operation Crown has been from the start.
As it all comes undone for the gambling moguls, the political and media classes are pretending to clutch their pearls, like they didn’t something fishy when Mike Baird implemented the NSW lock-out laws to squash every nightlife precinct in the Harbour City outside of the two suburbs that have giant casinos located within them.
Colloquially referred to as ‘The Hillsong Sharia’ Mike Baird’s nanny-state laws were first introduced in 2014 in what was purported to be a response to alcohol-fuelled violence, but was actually just an attempt to breath air into a manipulated Sydney property market and redirect foot traffic to James Packer’s casino.
However, in hindsight, after all the reluctant reporting of organised crime and political corruption within the gambling industry – the same media outlets that made a bomb off property listings in Kings Cross are starting to realise the lock out laws might have also been corrupt.
“Oh well” says former Liberal Treasurer Peter Costello, who is technically in charge of Domain.com.au, which is the only thing keeping the Sydney Morning Herald afloat long enough to paint Sydney as the most violent city in the world.
“You have to admit though, coward punches are bad”
