Star Entertainment’s Queen’s Wharf casino resort project inward Brisbane, Queensland, is part-owned by a Hong Kong companion with historical golf links to a notorious Triad boss.
That’s according to a written report by the Aboriginal Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), which has linked the company, Chow Tai Fook, to the former leader of the 14K Triads, “Broken Tooth” Wan Kuok Koi.
The tidings comes as Queensland kicked off a public enquiry Tuesday into Star’s suitableness to continue holding a gaming license inward the state. And it raises questions nigh wherefore Queensland regulators sanctioned Chow Tai Fook as a “fit and proper” partner inward the AU$3.6 one million million (US$2.55 billion) Queen’s Wharf developing in 2015.
Former Queensland auditor-general Len Scanlan, a probity advisor on the project, confirmed to ABC that the government activity was unaware of Chow Tai Fook’s checkered history at the time.
Cheng and Ho, Alleged Triad Ties
The company, which owns 25% of the venture, was formed by jewellery and dimension billionaire Cheng Yu Tung, who was Hong Kong’s third-richest piece when he died in 2020.
In the 1980s, Cheng went into business with Macau casino mogul Henry M. Stanley Ho, who at the clip owned the casino monopoly inwards the play enclave. Ho also died inwards 2020.
The Ho phratry is blacklisted from the casino industries of some jurisdictions, including New South Wales, for its alleged links to triads.
When Cheng and Ho opened their Macau VIP rooms, they used the 14K and Sun Yee On Triads as debt collectors, according to ABC.
Among them was “Broken Tooth” Koi, who in one case held an $8 meg post in a VIP elbow room owned past Cheng and Ho, according to Macau prosecutors.
In the 1990s, the Canis familiaris days of Portuguese rule, triad groups fought vicious sward wars for moderate of Macau’s effectual VIP rooms and resistance gambling dens. In 1998, Macau gaming inspector Francisco Xavier Pinto ut Amaral was slam deadened inward the street in tolerant daylight. He had tried to impose tighter regulations on the VIP rooms.
‘Broken Tooth’ Arrest
Wan was arrested later that year on suspiciousness of the attempted motorcar bombing of a local constabulary chief. He was convicted of illegal gambling, loan sharking, and criminal association, and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
He was released inwards 2012 and reentered the junket business. In May 2015, he opened the Guoying VIP Club at L’Arc Casino inward Macau.
In December 2020, Wan was sanctioned past the US government. According to a financial statement from the Treasury Department at the time, he was still the head of the 14K and had been spreading his criminal web through Southeast Asia and across China’s Belt and Road economic bloc.
As the licensing critical review begins in Queensland, Star Entertainment is ease awaiting the outcome of a similar enquiry in New South Wales. Both were triggered past reports inward the Aussie media alleging Star wooed suspected criminals, strange agents, and fraudsters to run a risk at its casinos from at least 2014 to 2021.