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.

Crime, casinos and communists

Phelan also revealed the federal government had last week appointed three new “examiners” to join its team of ACIC hearing room interrogators. It also confirmed that until March 2020, it had “performed some small routine annual tax work for this the Suncity group of companies”. Brogan refused to answer questions from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald about what, if anything, he knew about Chau’s criminal links. He conceded Cheng was still involved but insisted he was “squeaky clean”.

Gaming watchdog urges Premier to call pokies money-laundering inquiry

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. 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.

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”.

• And on December 1, the Suncity high-roller travel business ceased its casino operations in Macau, the place where it all began.
• It also confirmed that until March 2020, it had “performed some small routine annual tax work for this the Suncity group of companies”.
• 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.
• 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

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.

Chau’s operation also gave him the ear of the Chinese Communist Party elite who didn’t mind a punt and who, Australian authorities suspected, may also australian online casinos have wanted to quietly move large amounts of money to Australia. He came up with schemes to provide them credit in Australia, while also arranging to collect the debts they incurred in Australian casinos. According to media reports, the 47-year-old got his break as a 20-something disciple of Macau organised crime boss Wan “Broken Tooth” Kuok-koi. The arrest of Chau in Australia was never deemed likely, but ACIC hoped to displace Chau’s multibillion-dollar operations from Sydney and Melbourne and make him vulnerable to arrest offshore.