It has been fascinating to watch the once sleepy NSW casino regulator transform into a head kicker of compliance.
And its target, the financially battered Star Entertainment, has once again been thrown into chaos with the departure of its chief executive and chief financial officer.
The state-based casino regulators may have let The Star and Crown casinos get away with large manure piles of misconduct. But not anymore.
The once reluctant regulators, especially the one in NSW, now have a taste for blood.
It feels personal. Robbie Cooke resigns as Star chief executive disagrees with regulator, Philip Crawford.
On Friday, the NSW Independent Casino Commission (NICC), under the command of Philip Crawford, engineered a second cull of Star Entertainment executives.
In 2022, the upper management and boardroom of Star was cleaned out in response to the inquiry, launched after an investigation by the Herald, The Age and 60 Minutes into the casino operator in 2021, that delivered findings of misconduct and governance failings.
This latest executive cull includes the clean skin CEO Robbie Cooke who was brought into Star to oversee its rehabilitation. Three longer serving executives, who Cooke considered were not tarnished by the casino’s previous misconduct, have also been sacrificed at the altar of cultural revival.
While technically the departure of the senior staff was voluntary, it has the NICC’s fingerprints all over it. The NICC appears to have come to the view that new blood is needed at The Star given that reform isn’t happening fast enough.
Cooke told his staff on Friday that Crawford “had issues with my decision to retain a number of existing executives on my senior leadership team”. Against this backdrop, the NICC has announced a second inquiry into Star - one which will now involve public hearings.
Casino regulator turns predator with The Star on its menu
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25.03.2024
It has been fascinating to watch the once sleepy NSW casino regulator transform into a head kicker of compliance.
And its target, the financially battered Star Entertainment, has once again been thrown into chaos with the departure of its chief executive and chief financial officer.
The state-based casino regulators may have let The Star and Crown casinos get away with large manure piles of misconduct. But not anymore.
The once reluctant regulators, especially the........
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