In Australia and international law firm Allen and Overy LLP has reportedly recommended the far-reaching remediation plan recently put forward by local casino operator The Star Entertainment Group Limited.

According to a Monday report from Asia Gaming Brief, the London-headquartered practice was appointed to serve as an independent monitor for The Star Entertainment Group Limited in August as the beleaguered firm was being investigated by separate probes in the states of New South Wales and Queensland. The source detailed that these exercises both eventually found the company unfit to hold local casino licenses owing to revelations that it had flouted rules on the use of Chinese debit cards so as to process illicit transactions worth millions of dollars.

Requested retention:

The Star Entertainment Group Limited is responsible for the gambling-friendly Treasury Brisbane and The Star Gold Coast venues in its home state of Queensland and is reportedly planning to premiere that jurisdiction’s $2.8 billion Queen’s Wharf Brisbane development by the second half of next year. The Brisbane-headquartered company is moreover behind The Star Sydney facility in New South Wales and is purportedly hoping that the successful completion of its remediation plan will allow it to retain its casino licenses for both of these important jurisdictions.

Comprehensive consideration:

Allen and Overy LLP reportedly recommended the remediation plan from The Star Entertainment Group Limited after completing a month-long investigation before detailing that the scheme’s scope and structure should allow the casino operator to design and implement the changes necessary to address the issues raised by the New South Wales and Queensland probes. The law firm purportedly also noted that it believes the coming program will gradually evolve over time so as to more earnestly address root cause analysis and the ever-evolving regulatory landscape.

Reportedly read a statement from Allen and Overy LLP…

“Based on this fieldwork, in our opinion the program is sufficiently developed for the board of The Star Entertainment Group Limited to consider commencing the execution phase.”

Executive examination:

Allen and Overy LLP reportedly declared that The Star Entertainment Group Limited has arrangements in place via strong board-level oversight that will allow it to ‘govern and oversee’ the coming remediation program. The adjudicator purportedly pronounced that the casino company has furthermore ‘allocated individual executive-level accountability for each workstream to support commencing the execution phase’ and is simultaneously resolved to reinforcing this answerability ‘through formal accountability statements and performance measures in due course.’

Important itinerary:

In recommending the remediation plan from The Star Entertainment Group Limited and Allen and Overy LLP reportedly went on to assert that the firm has additionally ‘structured an approach for the identification of dependencies’ despite being well aware that effectively managing such a task will be ‘complex.’ Nevertheless, the practice purportedly finished by praising the scheme’s timeline as ‘reasonable for a program of this scale and complexity’ and noting that this schedule in addition to associated funding and resourcing criteria are to be reviewed ‘on an ongoing basis.’