16 casino employees sent to prison
Print Edition
A SHANGHAI court has sentenced 16 Australian and Chinese casino employees to nine to 10 months in prison after they pleaded guilty to gambling-related charges, the casino company and an Australian official said.
Nineteen defendants, including three Australians from the sales and marketing team of Australia’s Crown Resorts Ltd, were convicted by the court. Three defendants, who were released on bail last November, were not fined or sentenced to prison, Crown Resorts said.
Casino gambling, the marketing of casinos and organizing overseas gambling trips involving 10 or more people are illegal in China’s mainland. The case against Crown Resorts’ staff came as authorities crack down on gambling as part of a widespread campaign against official corruption.
Eleven defendants were sentenced to nine months in prison and five to 10 months, Crown Resorts said. Their time spent in detention since October 14 will count toward their sentences.
The 16 were also fined a total of 8.62 million yuan (US$1.3 million), which Crown Resorts is paying ex gratia, the company said in a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange.
“The three Australians and the other defendants pleaded guilty,” the Australian Consul General in Shanghai, Graeme Meehan, said outside Baoshan District People’s Court.
According to Crown Resorts, the 17 current and two former employees were convicted of offenses including organizing gambling parties or being engaged in gambling as one’s main business, which carry a maximum sentence of three years in prison.
Jason O’Connor, head of Crown Resorts’ international VIP programs, was sentenced to 10 months, and Australian-Chinese dual nationals Jenny Pan and Jerry Xuan received sentences of nine months, Meehan said.
The company said the court fined O’Connor 2 million yuan, Pan 400,000 yuan and Xuan 200,000 yuan. O’Connor, who is based in Melbourne, Australia, was ordered to be deported.
“Crown remains respectful of the sovereign jurisdiction of the People’s Republic of China and does not intend to comment further at this time,” the company said.
Crown Resorts’ vice president in China, Malaysian Alfread Gomez, was among the defendants.
Following the arrests in October, Crown Resorts began withdrawing from its Chinese business to concentrate on the Australian market. Last month it said it raised US$987 million after it sold off the last of its stake in a decadelong joint-venture casino operator in Macau, the Chinese territory where gambling is legal.
Casino operators across Asia have sought to lure Chinese high-rollers who have avoided Macau — the world’s biggest gambling market — because of the nation’s corruption crackdown. At the same time, the government has been trying to stop the flow of Chinese money into foreign casinos.
In 2015, police arrested 13 South Korean casino managers and 34 Chinese agents for allegedly selling packages with free tours and free hotels. At least seven South Korean managers later received prison sentences of 13 or 14 months, according to court verdicts posted online. They were also ordered to pay fines of up to 150,000 yuan.
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