The world and its capacity to do good is at times compromised when arithmetic and crude key performance indicators or metrics play their way out instead of morals.
We see this in business, sport and politics so often that it is difficult for people to not feel deflated when those working on behalf of the community or shareholders conduct themselves with a disregard for community expectations. The banking sector got a savaging during the Hayne Royal Commission as a result of behaviours that should never have taken place.
We also see things that go right and it was interesting to note that, in the midst of the Crown case study as outlined by the report released last week, that the banks played their part in chasing down what appeared to them to be suspicious, structured deposits.
Former Supreme Court judge Patricia Bergin’s report into Crown, which concluded that Crown was unsuitable to hold a restricted gaming license, outlined the role of the banks in kicking Crown’s tyres to understand how the casinos in Perth and Melbourne were using certain bank accounts that belonged to two companies.
The two companies were called Southbank Investments Pty Ltd and Riverbank Investments Pty Ltd and the transactions were said to take place between 2012 to 2016.
Southbank Limited was created on 1 August 1996, while an entity called the Burswood Partnership Pty Ltd was create on 15 May 2003. Burswood Partnership had a name change to Riverbank on 12 November 2005.
These entities were set up with the rationale that they would provide privacy to overseas clients wanting to flutter their money away at Crown. Privacy is arguably achieved by having amount X deposited with company Y and then company Y flicks the money on to the piggy bank over at Crown.
The money in the books at Crown would be seen as coming from company Y rather than the rather wealthy overseas client that doesn’t want people to know how many smackeroos they are throwing about in the form of chips at the tables.
Each transaction would need to have a unique identifier such as a Crown customer number so that it could be appropriately described or dealt with at the casino.
HSBC held the Riverbank and Southbank company accounts when the financing arrangements were first established but the bank cut ties with the two Crown-affiliated entities when it conducted a review of the gambling space.
Southbank went with the CBA when its HSBC relationship was terminated and Riverbank decided it would camp at ANZ.
ANZ and the CBA would, over an extended period of time, launch query after query into the way in which Crown handled the accounts for these two entities used as clearing houses for funds from valuable customers.
Queries at one point related to why there was a series of transactions coming in from different bank branches offshore that were below the A$10,000 reporting threshold, causing concerns with one of the banks.
The report goes into some detail on the kinds of questions asked by the bank so it understood why there