Star Entertainment: what the inquiries found, and what the licence cost

I sat through enough of the Crown inquiries a few years back to think I'd seen the worst a casino operator could put in writing about itself. Then the Star Entertainment material started surfacing, and honestly, some of it read like a photocopy with the names changed. Same junket concerns, same "we'll fix it later" internal emails, same regulators eventually running out of patience.

The Star Entertainment money laundering inquiry, or rather the string of them, has now produced findings serious enough to put the group's Sydney, Brisbane and Gold Coast licences under a kind of probation that has no obvious end date. This is the story of how that happened, told through what the inquiries actually found, not what commentators assumed.

How the Star Entertainment money laundering inquiry began

The trouble started, as it so often does with casinos, with reporting on the relationship between operators and high-roller junket networks. Investigative journalism in 2021 raised questions about Star's dealings with patrons linked to organised crime concerns and about the effectiveness of its anti-money-laundering controls. That reporting prompted New South Wales to establish a formal review, led by former judge Adam Bell KC, running in parallel with — and informed by — the earlier Crown Resorts inquiries that had already reshaped how state regulators think about casino suitability.

Readers who followed the Crown saga will recognise the shape of what followed. We've covered that ground in detail in our piece on the Crown Resorts inquiries, and it's worth reading the two sagas side by side, because the regulatory playbook barely changed between them.

The Bell review's terms of reference asked a blunt question: was Star Entertainment's Sydney operator, The Star Pty Ltd, still suitable to hold a casino licence. Bell's first report, delivered in 2022, answered that question in the negative in relevant respects, finding what he described as serious failures in the company's anti-money-laundering systems and cultural problems that went well beyond a few rogue transactions.

What the Bell review found

The Bell review found, according to its published findings, that Star had allowed money to move through its Sydney casino via channels that should have triggered scrutiny under the anti-money-laundering framework and didn't, or did so too late to matter. The review pointed to arrangements involving China UnionPay cards disguised as hotel expenditure, and to a broader pattern the review characterised as a company that prioritised revenue from high-value patrons over the compliance obligations that came with hosting them.

Bell's report also found cultural failings inside the organisation, describing a environment in which risk and compliance functions were, in his assessment, under-resourced and insufficiently empowered relative to the commercial pressure to keep premium players at the tables. None of this, it should be said plainly, amounted to a criminal finding against any individual. The Bell review was a suitability inquiry conducted under the relevant NSW casino control legislation, not a criminal trial, and its findings go to corporate governance and licence fitness rather than personal guilt.

Following the report, the NSW Independent Casino Commission found The Star unsuitable to hold its casino licence in its then form, and imposed what's called a "special manager" — essentially an independent overseer installed inside the business with power to direct management decisions. That's a heavier intervention than a fine. It's the regulator saying, in effect, we don't trust the board to run this on its own for now.

Queensland runs its own inquiry

Because Star also operates in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast, Queensland wasn't going to simply defer to Sydney's findings. The Queensland government commissioned its own review, led by retired judge Robert Gotterson, which delivered findings in 2022 broadly consistent with Bell's: that Star Entertainment's Queensland operations shared the same governance and compliance weaknesses identified in New South Wales, and that the group was, at that point, unsuitable to hold its Queensland licences without significant remediation.

Queensland's regulator kept Star's licences in place but attached conditions, again including external oversight, and set a remediation timeline the company was required to meet. A second Queensland review followed in 2024, examining whether Star had actually made the promised progress. That review, again under Gotterson's direction, found the company's remediation had been slower and less complete than hoped, and Queensland extended the oversight period rather than declaring the job done.

I'd argue this second Queensland finding is the more damaging one in some ways, because it wasn't about historical conduct anymore. It was about whether a company under the brightest possible spotlight could actually fix itself when everyone was watching. The answer, per the regulator's own assessment, was: not fast enough.

The financial and leadership fallout

The consequences for Star Entertainment as a listed company have been severe by any measure. The group has reported substantial losses across successive financial years, driven partly by remediation costs, partly by fines, and partly by a genuine collapse in high-roller revenue as the compliance overhaul made the business less attractive to the exact patrons who'd generated its premium turnover. Several senior executives and board members departed during and after the various inquiries, including chief executives and chairs across both the Sydney and Brisbane-facing arms of the business. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission and financial crime regulator AUSTRAC both pursued separate action, with AUSTRAC's civil penalty proceedings against Star Entertainment alleging systemic non-compliance with anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing obligations under the relevant federal Act. Those proceedings, at time of writing, remain matters for the courts to determine, and it's important to distinguish AUSTRAC's allegations, which are exactly that, from the state-level suitability findings, which have already been made by the respective reviews.

Where the licences stand now

Neither New South Wales nor Queensland has revoked Star's licences outright. Instead, both jurisdictions have run what amounts to a suspended-sentence model: the licences remain, conditional on external management oversight and ongoing demonstration of remediation, with the explicit threat that failure to improve could eventually lead to suspension or cancellation. That's a meaningfully different outcome from Crown, which faced its own near-miss moments but ultimately retained its licences across every state it operates in, following its own remediation programmes.

Star's Gold Coast development, a large mixed-use casino and tourism precinct, has also become entangled in the group's broader financial distress, with reports of construction and funding complications layered on top of the regulatory burden. It's a reminder that suitability findings don't sit in isolation from a company's balance sheet; they compound with everything else going wrong at the same time.

A pattern regulators clearly noticed

What strikes me most, having watched both the Crown and Star inquiries run their course, is how similar the regulatory language has become. Both companies were found, by independent reviews, to have treated anti-money-laundering compliance as a cost centre to be managed down rather than a genuine control function. Both had boards that, according to the respective findings, received warnings internally well before the public reporting forced the issue. Whether that pattern changes the culture of casino regulation permanently, or whether the next operator under scrutiny produces the same findings in five years' time, is honestly an open question. The special manager model is relatively new in Australian casino regulation, and nobody yet knows how long a company can sit under that kind of oversight before regulators simply lose patience.

For readers following the wider run of Australian corporate accountability stories, the Star saga sits comfortably alongside our coverage of the Hayne Royal Commission and the broader question of what happens when an industry's compliance culture is tested by an inquiry with real teeth. You'll find more of that pattern across our Scandals & Reckonings archive.

What happens next

Star Entertainment's next milestones are largely set by the regulators rather than the company itself: further compliance reporting to the NSW Independent Casino Commission and Queensland's regulator, continued special manager oversight, and the outcome of AUSTRAC's civil proceedings, which could add a further financial penalty on top of everything already absorbed. The company has consistently stated its intention to meet remediation requirements and retain its licences. Whether it manages that is, at this point, a matter for the regulators to judge, not for me to predict. I've learned not to bet on casino remediation timelines. They tend to run longer than anyone promises at the press conference.

— Colin Ashworth, Scandals & the public record