$2 Shell company laundered hundreds of millions at Crown Casino Perth
International organizations are believed to be using Crown Perth to launder hundreds through $2 shell companies. The investigation carried out by NSW into Crown casino shows that a company, known as RIverbank Investments Pty Ltd, was involved in laundering hundreds of millions of dollars to Perth’s monopoly casino.
WA’s casino regulators were made aware of this but they showed little interest despite the media allegations of money laundering and how Crown did the business. Patricia Bergin, a Commissioner, states in a report that Riverbank and Southbank, which channelled funds to Crown, were exploited by international criminal organizations. The report said that hundreds of millions of dollars were deposited and transacted into the Crown casino’s accounts.
“There can be no doubt that the processes adopted by Crown outlined above enabled or facilitated money laundering through the Southbank and Riverbank accounts. No action was taken to close down the operations of Southbank or Riverbank, or implement additional controls to prevent the accounts being exploited for the purposes of money laundering,” the report said.
According to the ASIC records, Riverbank Investments Pty Ltd is a $2 company which is owned by Crown Resorts Limited. The chief executive Ken Barton is its sole director. Patrons of Crown deposit money into the account and transfers it to Crown Perth. This transfer is done to be credited to the deposit account.
Most of the deposits were done under $10,000 which meant the amount was not required to be reported to the regulators as it did not cross the limit. Which further meant that financial transactions are not monitored.
ANZ raised red flags when Riverbank opened an account. They pointed out that suspicious deposits are being made by the same person at different branches. However, the Crown board was never informed of this.
