Crown pulls staff out of China

Among the Crown employees detained is Jiang Ling, a Shanghai resident who has worked for the Australian company for more than five years and processes applications for high-rolling gamblers, according to her American husband, Jeff Sikkema. He hasn’t been able to reach Jiang, a Chinese national, since she was taken and he’s especially concerned about China’s high conviction rate. He emphasized Jiang has a purely administrative role. “She’s not even in sales,” Sikkema said by phone. “I don’t understand why she was detained. There’s nothing to hide.”
Jiang’s detention notice, seen by Bloomberg, shows she is being held by Shanghai police for alleged “gambling crimes.” Her detention date is listed as Oct. 14 at 3:50 p.m.
In June last year, Chinese officials arrested 14 South Koreans, including employees of casino operators Paradise Co. and Grand Korea Leisure Co., for allegedly marketing to Chinese gamblers.
Those arrests and the detentions of the Crown staff highlight the delicate nature of working in China for an overseas casino operator.
Crown and other Australian casino firms pulled staff out of China over the weekend, said Jamie Soo, an analyst at Daiwa Capital Markets. While gambling advertising and collecting gaming debts are illegal in China, they are “established practices” carried out by marketing teams, he said. Macau operators also pulled staff from China, Soo said, citing “ground checks’’ by Daiwa.
“They’re all operating in a pretty gray area,” said Theo Maas, a fund manager at Sydney-based Arnhem Investment Management. “You can’t promote gambling in China directly, but obviously the ultimate goal is to get them to come and gamble with you. You can see where the confusion lies.”
Packer has a net worth of USD4 billion. His privately held investment vehicle, Consolidated Press Holdings, owns 48 percent of Crown Resorts.
In recent months, Packer has retreated from Crown’s day-to-day operations, stepping down as chairman in August 2015 to focus on the company’s new projects, which include a casino being developed in Las Vegas and the Sydney hotel for high rollers. He quit as a Crown director later that year. Bloomberg