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.
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”.
Crime, casinos and communists
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.
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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 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.
Crime, casinos and communists
- Anti-money-laundering agency Austrac, which also has a representative on the ACIC board, warned last year in a heavily redacted report that high-roller operations were also suspected of funding foreign interference operations.
- And on December 1, the Suncity high-roller travel business ceased its casino operations in Macau, the place where it all began.
- On November 28, Macau police remanded him in custody to face trial for alleged criminal association, illegal gambling, money laundering and running an illegal online gambling operation in the Philippines.
- But having been effectively called out as an organised crime enabler in Australia, the clock was ticking on Chau.
- 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.
- It also confirmed that until March 2020, it had “performed some small routine annual tax work for this the Suncity group of companies”.
On November 27, staff working for the australian online casinos most colourful man in international gambling were led out of his Macau office handcuffed and wearing black hoods. Access and manage your vacant residential land tax information.
