Leagues clubs have a radical plan to stop criminals playing the pokies

Leagues clubs want police to issue blanket bans on suspected money launderers from entering licensed venues, as they continue to grapple with the NSW Crime Commission’s finding that billions of dollars in dirty money is flowing through the poker machines in pubs and clubs.

Leagues Club Australia chief executive Don Hammond told a conference on gaming regulation on Tuesday that the industry was shocked to learn the extent to which the proceeds of crime were being spent on their premises, and would welcome the power to keep the perpetrators out of their venues.

“We already do it at racetracks and casinos,” Hammond said. “Clubs and pubs would be very happy if the criminals could be told not to go into licensed premises.”

The Crime Commission report recommended that government work on a legislative mechanism to support the exclusion of people suspected of dealing with the proceeds of crime from licensed venues, to supplement the existing rights of venues to ban patrons from their premises.

The NSW Crime Commission’s director of strategic intelligence and capabilities Tahli Blicblau told the conference that there had been serious intelligence gaps before the report was completed in October last year.

“Broadly, industry told us that they wanted to do the right thing and it wasn’t in their interest to allow illegal activity to occur,” Blicblau said.

“Prior to the publication of our report, industry didn’t know and couldn’t be expected to know the extent of the criminal problem within their venues ... because law enforcement officials didn’t even know.”

But she said there were also “clear and striking” cases where money laundering was not picked up by venues when it should have been, including people who were playing 10 machines at once, and venue staff locking people’s machines to allow them to go home and get more money without anybody else taking over the machine.

Hammond said these cases represented a tiny minority of venues, but the industry wanted to be proactive in preventing money laundering from occurring at places that were not previously aware it was happening.

“We’re more than happy to work with authorities. They know who the criminals are, so they can tell them they’ve been warned off licensed premises.”

The annual conference, Regulating the Game, has brought together regulators and industry in the aftermath of several damaging public inquiries that have resulted in tighter rules to prevent money laundering. Crown Resorts and the Star Entertainment Group have banned junket tours and agreed to phase out cash from their venues.

The NSW Crime Commission recommended that cashless gaming be extended to pubs and clubs as well, a measure to which the peak industry groups are opposed, though others in the industry have conceded is inevitable. The government has committed to adopting the measure if it is elected on March 25, while Labor wants to do an expanded trial of the technology.

In 2019, AUSTRAC created a specialist gambling team, which looked at casinos, corporate bookmakers and pubs and clubs. In 2023, it will begin a second specialist team to focus solely on pubs and clubs.

“It’s extremely true that we are going to continue to focus on the gambling sector into the future,” said AUSTRAC’s national manager of education, capability and communications Bradley Brown.

Liquor and Gaming NSW executive director Jane Lin said her agency was turning its attention to gaming room signage. An inspection of 310 venues late last year – most of which had been inspected in the past six months – identified 41 breaches.

Sixteen had ATMs in gaming areas, eight had gaming machines visible from the outside, and six had prohibited signage visible from the outside.

“We’re focusing on signs that contain images that relate to particular gaming franchises, or gaming machine artwork, or otherwise excessively draw attention to the availability of gaming machines inside the venue,” Lin said.

“Most concerning was, I guess, what appears to be a level of non-compliance with quite basic harm-minimisation measures, in particular, the identification of quite a number of ATMs located in gaming machine areas.”