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Australia’s biggest casino company, Crown Resorts is responsible for the horrible memories Jenny Jiang will have to live with as she spent four weeks in a Chinese prison with prostitutes, pickpockets and drug dealers.
Shanghai resident, Ms. Jiang says that having a criminal record whilst living in China is a huge obstacle, although where is it not?
Jiang is the first employee of Crown Resorts, belonging to one of Australia’s top billionaires James Packer, to break ranks and openly talk about the incidents that happened to her and her colleagues. Jiang is claiming that Crown Resorts set up multiple offices across the mainland in China back in 2010 and the casino cashback bonuses for Australians were given to staff as huge incentives. This resulted in breaking Chinese law but the company abandoned them as authorities closed in and got involved.
Jiang’s claims regarding the incentives can be backed up in Chinese court documents. The latter describes how the Crown’s sales staff received their appropriate incomes as commissions to be paid out when their high-roller customers presumably reached appraisal targets by in turn gambling billions of dollars.
The information revealed by Jiang is important in many ways. One reason could potentially question the fitness and compatibility of the Crown to hold gaming licenses. Some of the revelations additionally raise questions about corporate governance practices within the gaming company.
Ms. Jiang, alongside her 18 colleagues were convicted of breaching mainland Chinese laws and was held in custody. The said laws prohibit gambling as well as its promotion. This involves tempting the groups of high rollers to offshore casinos.
The issue is problematic enough in and of itself. However, matters with the aftermath of the Casino scandal may be far more reaching than we can imagine. According to Jiang, the false promise made by Crown to bring revenue to the Australian government through its gaming operations led to the rubber-stamping of visas for a multitude of Chinese nationals, vouched for by Crown, for they had promised to gamble tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars on single trips to its casinos in Melbourne or Perth. Apparently, some applications were rubber-stamped and some visas got fast-tracked by Australian consulate offices in China.
The spokesperson from the Department of Home Affairs declared that all visa applications were assessed against the law. The department did not seem to have a hold of evidence in relation to the conditions being waived for Crown. The appropriate offices in China, he added, are doing everything to properly scrutinize and manage applications accordingly.
Jiang made continuous remarks with regard to the way staff members are treated under Crown Resorts. The vivid analogy used by her compared staff to a used napkin that can safely be discarded in a garbage bin. She went on to add that money matters far more than human beings who are employed. Reportedly, Jiang refused a $60,000 payment which was offered to her from Crown. As if it were not scandalous enough already, the sources claim that the condition required her to remain quiet on the matter. It seems like she is taking quite a bit of risk by breaking the silence in order to report the story of a police crackdown which is still cloaked in secrecy.
Exclusive interview with 60 minutes came amid separate accusations directed towards Crown. It appears that the company has worked with tour operators that are backed by international organized crime syndicates. This includes a triad-controlled drug trafficking group.
Surprisingly, and despite such blatant exhibitions of evidence and revelations, Crown Resorts does not want to admit to any sort of breaching of the Chinese law. The company refutes any suggestion that it deliberately introduced its staff members to the risk of detention in China
While Crown employees were detained, the company’s share price plunged considerably followed by lodging a class action by law firm Maurice Blackburn. This action is defended by Crown Resorts which seems like a good base for the allegation that it should have known better about the probable risks.
As for the relationships with junket individuals and operators, Crown’s statement implied that the company is not willing to comment in any way about its business affairs with concrete individuals or businesses. Nevertheless, it has a legible program that finances counter-terrorism and is aimed at decreasing money laundering subjected to regulatory supervision by AUSTRAC.
The most notable shareholder of Crown Resorts, Mr. James Packer, on the other hand, claims that he had no knowledge of the company’s conduct in China which does not seem like an effective statement considering the fact that it led to the prosecution of the company’s employees accompanied with numerous controversial revelations. Packer has not worked as an executive director at the Crown Resorts since 2012 and officially resigned from the position of chairman in August of 2015. According to his lawyer’s letter, Pecker is not to be blamed since he is not even a board member and only had a passive role at Crown.
Although, Jiang accused the company of not only violating Chinese law but also disregarding the welfare of Chinese employees as senior managers continuously offered sales staff bonuses with the intention of luring Chinese high-rollers to gamble at Crown’s Australian casinos.
Multiple internal sources additionally reported that the largest VIP gamblers were offered help securing immigration in Australia and not only that. The property investments in Melbourne and Sydney, as well as their children’s schooling, would also be taken care of. The staff members who would refuse to comply with such conditions, claims Jiang, were sacked. Higher management authorities were pushing every single sales staff member to meet more customers and drum up business in questionable ways, recalls ex-employee.
Finally, Jiang reflects on how the Crown treated them even when it became clear that the Chinese police had gotten their hands on the matter. The directive implied the promotion of gambling but doing so under the radar while refusing to assist police in the event they were raided.
Numerous sources confirm the truth of Jiang’s claims as it appears that before the events, Resorts casino repeatedly told its Chinese staff to make false claims with regards to their job locations when communicating with the Chinese authorities.
