The generosity Khoury said Star showed him has been confirmed by a privileged casino person and highlights how easy it is for banned high-rollers to operate around state regulation of the gaming industry.
Khoury told The Age and the Herald that a senior Star executive had called him to talk about the ban imposed on him in December.
Star Gold Coast Casino in Broadbeach, Queensland.
“He told me, ‘Comrade, we want you back, but you have to go through a process,'” Khoury said.[He told me] all i had to do was get my Sydney [police commissioner’s] ban lifted “.
Khoury also revealed that he had bought an apartment in one of the towers of Star’s renovated Gold Coast casino and was seeking legal advice on whether his ban would prevent him from staying.
He said he was not the only big player attracted to Star’s Queensland casinos, despite bans in NSW and Victoria, where he self-excluded. “All the excluded players from Melbourne and Sydney have been up there. There are a lot of people in there who have made it much worse than me,” he said.
NSW and Victoria’s organized crime detectives have described separately a large number of suspected crime figures entering Queensland to play. Police sources from both states said that for years, detectives had tracked suspects heading north to play after they were issued a ban on gambling by the commissioner or convicted of drug trafficking.
“We would go out with John and the boys. They would tell us gangster-style humorous stories … we knew he had been banned by the police in NSW. It was a closed eye, an open eye. “
A privileged person of the Star casino
A high-profile player banned in Victoria who frequented the properties of Star’s Queensland is a man allegedly the head of the mob in Australia. The man cannot be named for legal reasons, but his story was reported last week in this headline.
A privileged person from Star, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that this man, whom some of the casino called “The Don,” was discreetly encouraged to travel to Queensland by Star. Approaches were made through a concrete mixer and wealthy Melbourne player.
“It simply came to our notice then [the alleged mafia boss] he was a good gambler, but Melbourne was banned from playing. So we would say to his friend, “Can you get him to come to Queensland with you?” The source said.
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The revelations raise serious questions about Star’s conduct in Queensland and the long-standing failure of state police commissioners to use their powers to exclude high-risk players. Queensland police have banned only two players, including Khoury, both of which were issued this year. Although public hearings have been held in NSW and Victoria on Star and Crown casinos, the Palaszczuk government has so far resisted calls for an investigation into public casinos in Queensland.
In a statement, Queensland police said they were reviewing their use of their gambling ban powers in response to recent investigations into casinos by other states and information shared by other police forces.
But police sources have also revealed that AUSTRAC and the Queensland Police Organized Crime Division have moved urgently to remedy the historic police inaction. Police have recently uncovered what detectives have called the “Treasury Group,” a group of alleged Asian money launderers targeting Star’s Brisbane Casino.
In a statement, AUSTRAC said it was working closely with Queensland police while warning that casinos were at greater risk of exploitation by criminal figures if their controls were weak.
Police sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to comment publicly, said the organization most guilty of not supervising Star in Queensland was the state regulator, the Liquor and Gaming Regulatory Office.
John Khoury (left) and Mick Gatto.Credit: Erin Jonasson
“It is a joke that one of the states most exposed to the infiltration of organized crime in casinos is suspending a public investigation,” a police source said.
The welcome on the red carpet Khoury says he received in Queensland highlights Australia’s difficulty in controlling cross-border fund movement and gambling activity, especially given that casinos are state-regulated. .
Khoury, 54, is a strong and brilliant Melbourne identity and a person of frequent police interest. He is described in Star Pattern Files as an associate of “numerous Melbourne-based organized crime figures, including Mick Gatto.” This headline does not suggest that Khoury is a criminal, only that he has been the subject of repeated police attention. He denies all allegations of crimes.
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Khoury said Star’s efforts to retain him as a customer following his 2007 NSW police ban included buying him a gold Rolex watch for his 50th birthday in 2017.
A Star informant confirmed that not only was he given the $ 50,000 watch, accommodation, flights, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in game credits, but his underworld collaborators also received gifts.
The source said that among these people were Ange “Fat Ange” Venditti and Jack Doumani, who have been the subject of organized crime investigations. In addition, Doumani is facing court charges of financial crime, which he defends, while Venditti has previously been charged with murder and subsequently compensated.
The Star expert confirmed that the Rolex watch was bought for Khoury at the Kennedy Luxury Watch Store in Melbourne in early 2017. Due to the size of Khoury’s wrist, the band had to be lengthened.
“It was a reward for loyalty and an incentive to come on another trip to the Gold Coast,” the source said.
In the same year that the watch was purchased, an investigation by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission codenamed “Northern” found that $ 39 million had been moved to Gold’s casino accounts. Coast of Khoury during previous years.
The investigation examined the opaque source of Khoury’s funds. Star’s internal books reveal that between April and December 2021, Khoury bet $ 2.5 million on Star’s Gold Coast casino. The Star informant said that when Khoury had a series of big losses at the casino, the staff was allowed to give him tens of thousands of dollars in free bet chips.
“We could approve it in 10 minutes,” the source said.
For the past decade, Khoury typically spent a 10-day stay at Star’s Gold Coast Casino each January, coinciding with the Magic Millions Horse Racing Carnival, and returned at other times of the year.
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Star insider said that despite his 2007 NSW police ban, Khoury was Star’s target with incentives. Khoury often played at a private blackjack table and had his own Star staff member employed to meet all of his needs. The star staff would accompany Khoury to expensive dinners paid for by the casino group.
“We would go out with John and the boys. They would tell us gangster-style humorous stories, “the source said.” He had never been charged, but we knew he was connected to the underworld and had been banned by the police in NSW. It was a closed eye, an open eye. “
This continued even after Star implemented a policy in 2019 to ban players blacklisted by police in other states.
In 2019, Khoury was convicted and fined $ 750 by a Queensland magistrate after pleading guilty to using internal knowledge to bet on a football match. The bets were inadvertently discovered when police rang the phone of a drug dealer and heard Khoury (who was not the target of the drug investigation) asking the trafficker to bet on him.
Khoury said that when a senior Star manager called him to explain the casino’s decision in December to ban him from Star properties, it was this gambling offense that he cited.
“He told me they were investigating me for 12 months but found nothing about me. So they used the $ 750 fine to ban me,” Khoury said.
Star did not answer questions.
NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione then banned Khoury from playing anywhere in the state in 2007 after taking a high-profile trip to Sydney with Mick Gatto. The couple was photographed meeting several well-known gangsters from Sydney. Khoury self-excluded from Crown Casino in the early 2000s, around the time when then-Commissioner Christine Nixon banned several of her associates, including Gatto.
In March, during public hearings on NSW Bell’s investigation into Sydney’s Star Casino, Star’s senior research director Kevin Houlihan agreed that Star should have moved to ban Khoury from his sites. Queensland long before.
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