Loading The revelations about its dealings with Wong come as Crown Resorts reels from fresh scandal this week. In Victoria, local gaming inspectors leaked a video of a man unloading wads of cash from a freezer bag in one of Crown's Melbourne high-roller rooms. Multiple sources aware of the conduct captured on the leaked CCTV footage said Victoria's gaming commission and the police lacked the resources to investigate crime and misconduct at the casino and accused gaming minister Marlene Kairouz of ignoring long-standing problems. On Wednesday morning, Ms Kairouz repeatedly defended her decision not to seek any advice from police about their long-standing concerns about organised crime links to Crown. She also failed to explain why the gaming commission she oversees has failed to take any substantive action against Crown for years.

In NSW, The Age, the Herald and 60 Minutes have been contacted by the commission of inquiry into Crown’s application for a Sydney casino licence. The inquiry, by former judge Patricia Bergin, is seeking evidence of Crown's links to organised-crime groups and misconduct tied to Crown's high-roller operations. The revelations about Joseph Wong’s activities at Crown's Melbourne and Perth casinos suggest Crown sought the custom of big spenders from across the globe without subjecting them to adequate screening. Accordingly, Crown failed to detect or act quickly to block high-rollers linked to crime or corruption and possibly seeking to launder funds. Wong's Security Council listing was endorsed by the federal government in April 2006 and should have prevented him stepping foot in Australia, let alone going to a casino.Yet the leaked records detailing Wong's gambling reveal he made multiple visits to Crown with an Indonesian high-roller business (called a junket) which was paid by Crown to attract extravagant gamblers, known as whales. Wong or the junket that brought him to Crown would have received lucrative incentives and gifts to encourage Wong to keep punting. Crown did not respond to specific questions about Wong, but a company spokesman said it took “all of its obligations very seriously, and has no interest in being used by criminal elements”.

“In support of this, Crown works closely with Australia’s law enforcement and regulatory agencies on a range of matters, and assists in providing information for ongoing and new investigations.” Crown Casino. Credit:AAP Under international and Australian sanctions laws, states and companies can face criminal penalties for dealings with blacklisted people such as Wong and are often legally obliged to freeze or refuse their funds. In Wong’s case, it is also possible his funds were corruptly obtained and he may have been seeking to launder them. In July, The Age, the Herald and 60 Minutes revealed the ASX-listed Crown Resorts has been in business with junket operators backed by some of Asia’s most powerful organised-crime syndicates as part of an assertive push to attract more Chinese high-rollers. A trove of thousands of leaked files from inside the Australian gaming giant also revealed how Crown and its high-roller agents have encouraged and facilitated the travel and business activity of several figures of intense interest to police and security agencies, including a man wanted by Interpol and a suspected human trafficker.

The media investigation has sparked multiple state and federal inquiries into Crown or its high-roller agents. Ms Bergin's inquiry is probing Crown's fitness to hold the NSW gaming licence it needs at its proposed Barangaroo resort in Sydney's CBD, while the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission is investigating money laundering. The Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation recently asked for more time to conduct its own investigation into Crown's junkets. In a statement about Wong's activities in Australia, a Home Affairs spokesman said "the department is aware of this case". "The department thoroughly investigates instances of misuse of the visa system," the spokesman said, likely referencing its decision in 2018 to ban Wong from entering Australia on character grounds.

Loading Wong’s firm, the Oriental Timber Company, has been implicated by the UN and overseas authorities in smuggling arms to Taylor and financing his regime, which was responsible for crimes against humanity carried out in Sierra Leone in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The UN Security Council in 2008 reported publicly “Joseph Wong … received more than $8.5 million” in likely illicit funds - money that it urged UN members to freeze. In August 2010, Wong travelled to Perth from Asia on a private jet and gambled at Crown’s high-roller room in Burswood. In late 2013, Wong lost more than $4 million at the Mahogany Room at Crown’s Melbourne casino. In 2015, the UN lifted its sanctions regime that named Wong and other supporters of Taylor after the former Liberian president was jailed in the UK for overseeing a campaign of murder, rape and terror. But by then, Wong’s status as a businessman probably involved in corruption and money laundering was enshrined, as he had been subject to Security Council sanctions for more than a decade.