Australian motorcycle gangs are looking to buy into Cambodia’s casino market, prompting police to suggest the bikers are looking for international outlets to launder cash from their illegal drug trafficking activities.
Australia’s largest biker gang, the Rebels, has reportedly set up a local chapter in Cambodia, and is looking to buy an existing gaming joint or possibly build their own. The Rebels already operate bars in Phnom Penh, where the gang is believed to have struck up an allegiance with a Thailand-based gang, the Lone Brothers MC. The Herald Sun reported that another prominent Aussie biker gang, the Commancheros, is also considering buying into the Cambodian casino market.
Cambodia is host to large scale operators like NagaCorp, which runs Phnom Penh’s only authorized casino, NagaWorld, and Entertainment Gaming Asia, which operates casinos under the Dreamworld brand. But there are also a host of smaller gaming halls on the border with Vietnam that serve as an outlet for Vietnamese gamblers who aren’t allowed to gamble within their own country.
Australian bikers are also causing casino havoc in their home territory. New South Wales police commissioner Andrew Scipione recently exercised his authority to ban 141 Rebels members and associates from entering Echo Entertainment’s The Star casino in Sydney, citing the bikers’ attempts to extort, rob, launder money, deal drugs and commit other chicanery on the premises. The Daily Telegraph quoted Detective Inspector Wayne Walpole suggesting a further 90 bikers belonging to the Commancheros, Finks and Hells Angels gangs would be hit with exclusion orders and that total number of banned bikers “will be in the hundreds when we finish with them.”
Sticking with Echo, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has closed its investigation into allegations made this summer by Echo chairman John O’Neill that he and Crown Resorts boss James Packer entered into a secret agreement to carve up Australia’s casino business. O’Neill claimed that Packer had pledged to keep Crown out of Echo’s Brisbane market if Echo didn’t make any move to queer Crown’s bid to enter the Sydney market. The ACCC said it found insufficient evidence to support charges of cartel behavior by the casino firms and would not be taking any further action.
Meanwhile, Crown’s pursuit of its $1.3b VIP-focused Sydney casino took another step closer to breaking ground after the NSW upper house passed legislation approving the project. The proposed 70-storey, six-star casino-hotel still requires statutory approvals by both the Department of Planning and the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority but serious opposition isn’t expected. The resort is expected to open for business not long after the local monopoly held by The Star expires on Nov. 15, 2019.
