Crown royal commission: Helen Coonan to exit within a month as casino tries to retain licence afr.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from afr.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
(Image: Gorkie/Private Media)
When we learnt, via the Crown royal commission, that former Daniel Andrews adviser Chris Reilly had ordered the company s head of corporate affairs to threaten the Victorian gambling regulator with going over their head to the minister, we were given a glimpse of old Crown , as it s now termed. The Crown that treated regulation as a voluntary exercise and the regulator as a minor inconvenience, and that wielded its political connections to prevent any impediments to its profit-making. Old Crown is a thing of the past, the company, led by chair Helen Coonan, now insists. Indeed, according to the narrative offered to the royal commission yesterday by Coonan, it would have been even further in the past if she d had her way, but she didn t have the numbers on the board to dump its former CEO Ken Barton, or cooperate more with the Bergin inquiry in NSW, or defy the advice of Crown s lawyers, who exercised a strange power over the board that, as counsel a
Casino inquiries are the main game â make them count
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The built structures of Crownâs casino businesses loom large on the skylines of Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. The Victorian capital was the scene of much of the misconduct identified in this mastheadâs reporting from 2019 onwards; WA is in the early stages of its own royal commission into the Perth casino; and looming above them all is the casino at Sydneyâs Barangaroo, which the regulator recently declared has âa way to goâ before winning back its suspended licence and admitting its first gamblers.
James Packer s casino empire has been dealt another blow with the revelation that Crown Resorts underpaid hundreds of workers.
Crown reported itself to the Fair Work Ombudsman after stories surfaced of widespread underpayment of hospitality workers including at the casino giant s high-profile restaurants Dinner by Heston and Rockpool Bar & Grill.
But the underpayments that the Ombudsman is investigating at Crown are separate to those of its rock-star restaurants and involve workers employed directly.
Pictured: James Packer and Kylie Lim at St Tropez, France, in 2018. Mr Packer s casino empire has been dealt another blow
Crown Casino in Melbourne has been rocked by an investigation into underpaid wages right after a Royal Commission was launched
Victoria Calls for Royal Commission into Melbourne Crown Casino theepochtimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theepochtimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.