Federal Court approves $450 million Crown settlement

He expressed concern about the evidence presented by Crown to support its assertion.

“Most notably, there’s no evidence as to past payment of dividends and diminution of retained earnings or the group’s current enterprise value, and only the most superficial evidence of its ability to obtain future alternative sources of debt capital or additional equity capital,” Lee said during the hearing on Tuesday.

Crown’s barrister, Philip Crutchfield, KC, disagreed that the suitability of the $450 million fine needed further scrutiny: “We’ve got an agreed position with a very sophisticated regulator, dealing with the largest companies in Australia, extracting properly, huge fines for breaches of very important Commonwealth legislation.”

Crown and AUSTRAC agreed to the settlement, over the group’s anti-money laundering and counterterrorism failings, in May but needed court approval.

Crown is to make staggered payments over two years without having to pay interest on later instalments.

“If they have to pay the whole amount in a lump sum, they need to enter into negotiations, and the CFO [chief financial officer] of the company says, ‘I’m uncertain as to the outcome of such negotiations, given the impact of the challenging trading conditions’,” Crutchfield told the court.

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Crown was sold to private equity group Blackstone last year, following a series of inquiries that found it unfit to hold a casino licence in any state where it operates.

The inquiries were triggered by a series of reports by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes into Crown’s affairs in July 2019.

AUSTRAC has also commenced civil penalty proceedings in the Federal Court against Star Entertainment in March this year for alleged serious and systemic non-compliance with anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) laws.