How Alvin Chau was brought down by Australia

On November 27, staff working for the most colourful man in international gambling were led out of his Macau office handcuffed and wearing black hoods. Access and manage your vacant residential land tax information.

Crime, casinos and communists

• Brogan refused to answer questions from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald about what, if anything, he knew about Chau’s criminal links.
• Cheng was investing in many of Chau and Suncity’s corporate subsidiaries via offshore companies.
• According to media reports, the 47-year-old got his break as a 20-something disciple of Macau organised crime boss Wan “Broken Tooth” Kuok-koi.
• As organised crime detectives in Sydney and Melbourne uncovered similar examples, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission began doing its own work.

Chau’s Australian business flourished between 2012 and 2019, helping to earn him enough capital to finance action movies in Hong Kong and major casino projects in Russia and Asia. Use this portal to access and manage your land tax information. But having been effectively called out as an organised crime enabler in Australia, the clock was ticking on Chau.

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Chau’s operation also gave him the ear of the Chinese Communist Party elite who didn’t mind a punt and who, Australian authorities suspected, may also have wanted to quietly move large amounts of money to Australia. He came up with schemes to provide them credit in Australia, while also arranging to collect the debts online pokies they incurred in Australian casinos. According to media reports, the 47-year-old got his break as a 20-something disciple of Macau organised crime boss Wan “Broken Tooth” Kuok-koi. The arrest of Chau in Australia was never deemed likely, but ACIC hoped to displace Chau’s multibillion-dollar operations from Sydney and Melbourne and make him vulnerable to arrest offshore.

Chau had even been appointed to a prestigious CCP committee, a seemingly quiet endorsement of his operations. For years, the Chinese Communist Party had allowed Chau to build his junket empire, even though it appeared to conflict with the party’s anti-gambling edicts. The public reporting of Chau’s activities in Australia at the NSW Bergin inquiry and at the Finkelstein royal commission in Victoria placed Chinese authorities in a bind. As it looked into Suncity operatives behind closed doors, ACIC also provided information about the company to the state commissions of inquiry into Crown Resorts that, along with media exposés, led to the overhaul of Crown and Australia’s gambling industry. “Coercive examinations are one of the tools we use to exert maximum pressure on all levels of the criminal enterprise,” he said.

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The Macau-headquartered and Chau-owned “Suncity Gaming” had, according to intelligence briefings ACIC provided NSW and Victorian police, “significant capabilities to facilitate large-scale money laundering between Australia and China”. Over a year earlier, ACIC had added Chau’s junket business – the Suncity firm dealing with Crown and The Star and which was generating billions of dollars in high-roller turnover – to its Australian priority target list. It is not suggested that Brogan was personally involved in any wrongdoing or criminal activity, only that he is involved with Suncity.