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. 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. If you’re ready for a braver kind of banking, here are three ways to get started with Summerland Bank. A thriving community is central to our vision and how we measure success.

Chau also helped these Australia-bound punters to sidestep Chinese government bans on taking more than a few thousand dollars out of the country. He came up with schemes to provide them credit in Australia, while also arranging to collect the debts they incurred in Australian casinos. But the full story of Chau and his gambling junket operation, Suncity, is also a tale of financial and organised crime in Australia, and the work of a mostly hidden federal agency, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission. Whether it’s your first-ever account or you’re looking for a fresh start with a customer-owned, community-minded bank, we can get you up and running in minutes – online, over the phone, or in a local branch.

It’s headed by a former senior federal police officer, Mike Phelan, and is guided by board members who include AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess and the heads of state and territory policing agencies. But in a statement, ACIC chief Phelan confirmed his agency was increasingly using its compulsory interrogation powers to disrupt criminal operations and had also jailed three unnamed individuals who had failed to answer questions at secret hearings. Phelan also revealed the federal government had last week appointed three new "examiners" to join its team of ACIC hearing room interrogators.

Find your closest Summerland Bank branch and our friendly local team will be ready to help. 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. Anti-money-laundering agency Austrac, which also has a representative on the ACIC board, warned last year in a heavily redacted report that high-roller operations were also suspected of funding foreign interference operations.

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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. Chau had even been appointed to a prestigious CCP committee, a seemingly quiet endorsement of his operations. In a statement, PwC confirmed it paid Brogan an "annual entitlement", which was given to all former senior partners.

And on December 1, the Suncity high-roller travel business ceased its casino with payid - www.tumblr.com, operations in Macau, the place where it all began. But having been effectively called out as an organised crime enabler in Australia, the clock was ticking on Chau. 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.

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Pub: 11 Sep 2025 12:47 UTC

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