The Star accused of falsifying welfare checks as gamblers took $3.2 million from company

Weeks revealed Star Sydney had failed to fix a broken “ticket in, cash out” machine that allowed customers to take $3.2 million in cash they had not earned from the casino over a six-week period in June last year.

He said this event was of particular concern given it was not addressed by the company until July 24, and he had expected that an ASX-listed casino business would have strict oversight of its financial position at all times. Instead, it failed to fix the machine for almost two months, which meant customers were able to keep reusing their tickets in exchange for more money.

“This incident identified deep cultural problems in relation to the level of rigour through which controls are followed and the level of care in which work is conducted… I was also concerned about the control environment because I anticipated that balancing the books and counting money was something I anticipated the casino would be very good at,” Weeks said.

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Weeks also told the Bell inquiry that officers from Liquor and Gaming NSW revealed Star Sydney had failed to comply with its requirement to complete welfare checks if a customer had played on its poker machines for more than three hours. When the regulator conferred with the company’s compliance log, it became apparent that the relevant customer support officers had falsified the document to indicate the check had been completed.

Weeks said it quickly became apparent that this event was not a one-off but widespread across the Sydney premises and had prompted an investigation into its Queensland precincts in Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

“It’s a real impediment to transitioning to the type of culture that The Star wants to move to… It’s very concerning in the current circumstances that such a significant and widespread breach related to an apparent deliberate falsification of records occurred,” Weeks told the inquiry.

Weeks said he was most concerned that the breaches were raised only by Liquor and Gaming inspectors and not any staff within the company itself, despite the scale of the breaches.

Weeks also said he believed the company had unduly accessed his emails and calendar without his consent based on correspondence between Foster to Cooke which referred to information that they could not otherwise have had access to.

Foster wrote to Cooke on January 31: “They are prepping for war, we better do the same”, ahead of a meeting with the regulator that Weeks said they could not have known about without accessing his diary.

Weeks said he was surprised by the tone of the exchanges, given both executives had engaged normally with him in person, and he was concerned the company had allegedly been monitoring his diary.

“To suggest they wanted to go ‘to war’ with me and the regulator in a circumstance where their licences are suspended and there’s a decision about that suspension already scheduled to occur in June… is extraordinary,” Weeks said.

Weeks’ evidence will be followed by a number of senior and former executives over the next three weeks. Bell will then be charged with determining whether the group is suitable to operate on the basis of these testimonies. The ASX-listed businesses share price opened at an all-time low of 48¢ ahead of the revelations, indicating the market expects a gruelling month ahead for the struggling casino group.

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