Leaked internal files suggest Star Entertainment sharply reduced its problem-gambling and compliance capacity even as high-risk patrons kept losing money, and they also point to an effort to present lenders with rosier forecasts for the Brisbane casino, according to documents obtained by the Australian Financial Review and the Sydney Morning Herald.
As covered in our previous report, Star was already under severe financial and regulatory pressure, with licence restrictions still weighing on the business.
The files describe underfunding of problem-gambling programs and say low-income punters and other high-risk patrons were still being allowed to accumulate losses. They also say Star loosened source-of-wealth checks, making it easier for people to gamble under multiple identities, while guest support officers complained they were too overworked to spot patrons who should be excluded.
The staffing cuts were stark. Group compliance fell from 17 people to four, group risk from five to two, and the investigations team almost halved in the first six months of 2026. An early-year memo warned the company faced “significant and escalating” regulatory risk and health and safety gaps if it did not have enough staff to detect and deter problem gambling, while another said Star no longer had the capacity to sustain its commitments to NSW and Queensland regulators.
By 31 December, the company also had 1,456 enhanced customer due diligence checks and 1,057 delays in withdrawing gambling licences for problematic patrons. Another internal file said about 270,000 Factiva reports had gone unactioned for 699 days, and a separate record said transaction-monitoring alerts on telegraphic transfers of $25,000 or more lacked instructions for spotting financial-crime risk indicators.
The correspondence also describes a scramble over budgets for The Star Brisbane. One version was described as “achievable” for the 2027 financial year, while the version “communicated to the banks” was said to require revenue growth of 25% and EBITDA growth of 236%, or A$596.5 million in revenue and A$168.8 million in EBITDA; a separate description put the internal-circulation plan at 12% revenue growth and 165% EBITDA growth.
Richard Chan, Star Brisbane’s chief financial officer, said the alternate budget was for internal discussion only and that, as far as he was aware, Star did not share anything with banks. The DBC consortium did not respond to questions about whether information had been forwarded.
The leak also portrays wider upheaval inside the group. Bruce Mathieson jnr, appointed chief executive in December, sent a May message urging staff to focus on “saving each and every customer we have”, while another email said the shift challenged how Star handled safer gaming, security and financial-crime management. The files say the Mathieson family’s investment arm had poured more than A$200 million into the company, and that Bally’s had offered a complex A$300 million bailout package alongside it.
They also say Mathieson jnr pushed the division dealing with problem gambling to work faster with less staff, and that he later intervened in a dispute over David Chiu’s wish to gamble in the Sovereign Room high-roller area, dismissing concern as “ridiculous”. Separately, the leak says one of Mathieson jnr’s first appointments was Dave Whimpey, who joined Star as chief operating officer and interim chief executive of The Star Brisbane in early March, and that Whimpey’s appointment was later described as a disaster after being investigated by law firm Allens over whether he engaged in inappropriate workplace behaviour. The files say Mathieson jnr terminated Whimpey for “misconduct” within a month, and that the dismissal was never disclosed to the ASX.
Those revelations sit alongside the company’s broader remediation effort, which the NSW Independent Casino Commission says was still under way when it imposed A$10 million in fines and required a further A$5 million to be set aside for financial-crime technology improvements. A special monitor appointed in 2022 is due next month to decide whether Star can have its gaming licences returned.
