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”.
My Land Tax
But the accountant, who retired from PwC in 1995 and is paid a yearly partners’ fee by the giant consulting firm, appears to have contracted PwC to provide Suncity a corporate address and tax services. 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. 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. It’s headed by a former senior federal police officer, Mike Phelan, and is guided by board members who include AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess and the heads of state and territory policing agencies. ACIC exists to feed high-grade intelligence to state and federal agencies.
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.
Crime, casinos and communists
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 online pokies australia 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.
Chau had even been appointed to a prestigious CCP committee, a seemingly quiet endorsement of his operations. For years, the Chinese Communist Party had allowed Chau to build his junket empire, even though it appeared to conflict with the party’s anti-gambling edicts. The public reporting of Chau’s activities in Australia at the NSW Bergin inquiry and at the Finkelstein royal commission in Victoria placed Chinese authorities in a bind. As it looked into Suncity operatives behind closed doors, ACIC also provided information about the company to the state commissions of inquiry into Crown Resorts that, along with media exposés, led to the overhaul of Crown and Australia’s gambling industry. “Coercive examinations are one of the tools we use to exert maximum pressure on all levels of the criminal enterprise,” he said.
- 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.
- 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.
- But the accountant, who retired from PwC in 1995 and is paid a yearly partners’ fee by the giant consulting firm, appears to have contracted PwC to provide Suncity a corporate address and tax services.