Court rules former Star Casino CEO Matt Bekier broke law, but ASIC loses case against other directors

Justice Michael Lee ruled former Star Casino chief executive Matt Bekier breached some of his legal duties, but threw out multiple ASIC claims case against seven of the casino’s non-executive directors in the Federal Court on Thursday. The case pitted Australia’s powerful financial services regulator against 11 of the casino group’s senior staff and board members, amid allegations the Star was ignoring allegations wealthy Asian gamblers were taking “junket” trips to holiday and launder money at its flagship casino complex in Sydney’s Pyrmont. In December 2022, after media reporting of the allegations, ASIC brought proceedings against Star for allegedly failing to deal with risks around alleged money laundering and criminal activity. However on Thursday, the judge delivered a halfway house verdict that partly ruled in favour of the regulator and partly for the defence of Star’s executives. “ASIC has not established that it’s entitled to any relief against (defendants) Mr O’Neil, Mr Sheppard, Ms Lahey, Mr Bradley, Ms Pitkin, Mr Heap or Mr Todorcevski,” Justice Lee said. The judge said he based some of his ruling on the idea that the conduct of company directors must be assessed on their decisions at the time, not with the benefit of hindsight. “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards,” he said. “The human choice is to live by making choices and moving forward, sometimes without complete understanding, but one ultimately gains insights into those choices by looking back, evaluate judgments of past actions, including when assessing legal liability.” Ruling against former CEO Matt Bekier However, Justice Lee also ruled ASIC proved that Mr Bekier and Star’s former chief legal officer Paula Martin failed in some of their executives duties in respect to some of the allegations, but not all. He also said Mr Bekier’s evidence to the court was initially impressive before becoming at times “unconvincing, contradictory and on occasion highly improbable”. The rulings against Mr Bekier largely centred around his failure to share information with the casino’s board. He said a reasonable executive in the position of Mr Bekier would have ensured the board was made aware of information in reports provided to him around the probity of certain Chinese gamblers. Justice Lee also found a reasonable director would have shared other information with the board about the activities of a Sun City gambling group in the casino’s VIP area known as Salon 95. “I am satisfied that a reasonable director in Mr Bekier’s position with the information I found he had would have recognised that the other people on the Star board relied on him to bring to their attention any matters relating to this and that he engaged in contravening conduct.” Other ASIC claims against Mr Bekier were rejected in what Justice Lee described as a “vast” and “complex” judgement with multiple claims against nine remaining officers. On February 24, Star’s former Chief Casino Officer, Gregory Hawkins, was ordered to pay a penalty of $180,000 and disqualified from managing corporations for 18 months, while former Chief Financial Officer, Harry Theodore, was ordered to pay a $60,000 penalty and was disqualified from managing corporations for nine months. The agreement was related to breaches of the Corporations Act made against them in terms of Star offering services to the Sun City Chinese gambling junket.