Horseracing and financial records suggest Mr Cheng also spent up to $75 million in Australia:he bought the Eliza Park stud’s operations in Victoria and Queensland in 2013 for $17.8 million,and dozens of racehorses across the nation. At the time he bought the stud,Cheng told a horse racing magazine that the “investment in Australia will be significant both in terms of stallions and other bloodstock”. The launch of Mr Cheng’s stud business was held in Crown Casino in 2013 and was attended by 300 of Australia’s top breeders,horse owners and trainers who celebrated with champagne.

Last year,Mr Cheng was also involved in the purchase of the upmarket Sun Kitchen restaurant on Albert Park lake,one of Melbourne’s most exclusive locations. The restaurant serves Wagyu with black truffle,lobster,and an abalone claypot that costs $398.

A sensitive time

Despite his growing portfolio of Australian business interests,Mr Cheng’s story has remained hidden from public view until now. But industry sources said he had already emerged as a key figure in the ongoing state and federal inquiries into how Australia’s casino industry,and Crown in particular,partnered with suspected regional organised crime entities.

The anti-money-laundering body Austrac,the Australian Federal Police and the ACIC have all probed Mr Cheng’s financial activities — ongoing assessments which led to his elevation to the APOT list after November 2016.

Mr Cheng is one of two businessmen who run the Suncity business empire out of Hong Kong and Macau. The second is the dashing and high-profile Alvin Chau,whoThe Age andHeraldreported has been banned from entering Australia due to his organised crime links. Mr Chau and Mr Cheng exercise control over various private and listed Suncity businesses via companies in the offshore tax haven,the British Virgin Islands.

In 2018,Asia’s leading gaming regulators,the Hong Kong Jockey Club,circulated a report to other sports betting and gaming regulators describing Suncity as having deep organised crime links and stating the club would ban Suncity figures. It said Mr Cheng was “suspected to have a Triad background and maintain links to organised crime ... and may be of interest to Australian law enforcement authorities in relation to suspected large scale money laundering activities”.

The former intelligence director of anti-money agency Austrac,Todd Harland,said Crown’s decision to partner with Suncity suggested the “Hong Kong Jockey Club is more risk averse than Crown casino (or) maybe they've just made a better decision”.

The revelations are acutely sensitive for Crown as it builds the Barangaroo high-roller casino in Sydney,with various inquiries now probing its links to businesses with suspected organised crime ties.The links were first exposed byThe Age,theHerald and60 Minutesin July 2019.

If Suncity’s dealings with Crown in Melbourne were replicated at Barangaroo,then Mr Cheng’s linked business would be paid significant commissions by Crown to bring high rollers to Sydney.

Despite the risk it was facilitating an organised crime enterprise,no one from Crown sought to cut ties with Suncity,which continues to work as a high-roller agent. However,Suncity has drastically scaled back its Australian operations,pulling staff out of Crown,after facing intense media and law enforcement scrutiny.

Suncity’s media representative said the firm had struck a deal with Crown in 2014 to direct its high-roller gaming clients from China to Crown’s VIP gambling rooms.

At around the same time,Suncity set up an Australian company directed by Sydney accountant Stanley Brogan. In 2018,Mr Brogan was also appointed as the director of Sun Kitchen,the company running Suncity’s new restaurant. It is not suggested that Brogan was personally involved in any wrongdoing or criminal activity,only that he is involved with Suncity.

It is not Mr Brogan’s first dealing with a controversial Asian business venture. In 2015,the former PWC accountant emerged as the director of the company whose purchase of the $40 million Villa Del Mare mansion in Point Piper,Sydney,was blocked by then treasurer Joe Hockey.

In a statement,Crown said it took the allegations seriously and had referred them to relevant agencies.

Junkets and organised crime

It’s notoriously well known that high roller agents — known as junkets — have historic ties to organised crime. A Google search by Crown would have uncovered multiplemedia reports detailing Suncity’s links to organised crime and the Triads. The Hong Kong Jockey Club report said Mr Cheng posed “tangible criminal as well as reputational risks to the Club and indeed racing integrity in Hong Kong.”

“If Crown had said that they didn't know that a junket organiser (such as Suncity) was involved in organised crime,I think they're pulling your leg,” former Northern Territory gaming regulator Alan Pedley said.

Crown’s own anti-money laundering staff have repeatedly raised red flags about Suncity,sending multiple reports to anti-money laundering agency Austrac about suspicious money movements. Crown is likely to rely on these reports in defence of its partnership with Suncity.

Serving and former officials who worked for or with Austrac have queried why the money laundering agency had failed to do more to investigate Crown's dealings with Suncity,while acknowledging other agencies also had jurisdiction. Austrac said last year it "conducts rigorous compliance assessments of casinos"but declined to comment on specific cases.

Overseas corporate records analysed byThe Age,The Heraldand 60 Minutes also raise serious doubts abouta claim by the Crown Resorts board in 2019:that “the parent of the Suncity junket is a large company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange,which operates globally.”

The Suncity Junket is a private operation run out of Macau and controlled by Mr Chau via the Sun City Gaming Promotion Company Limited. It is not,as stated by the Crown board,connected to the Suncity companies on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

• Watch Nick McKenzie's story on the Nine Network's60 Minutes at 8.30pm on Sunday

The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald’s revelations about Crown

Former Crown China employeeJenny Jiang revealed what Crown had long denied - that it was illegally selling gambling trips to mainland Chinese customers,endangering local staff by offering luxury gifts,free gambling cash known as “lucky money” and free use of private jets.

Financial adviserRoy Moo,a licensed Crown junket representative,in 2013 used Crown to transfer $969,000 in drug money to Hong Kong. He was just one of those who helped international crime syndicate The Company exploit Crown to launder funds.

Crown Resorts paid brothel owner and alleged human traffickerSimon Pan to lure high rollers to its Australian casinos. Asian sex workers had been flown into Australia on private jets organised by Crown “junket” operators.

Crown junket partner and Toorak residentTom “Mr Chinatown” Zhou was an international criminal fugitive,the subject of an Interpol red notice for financial crime.

Ming Chai,the cousin of Chinese president Xi Jinping,was a Crown VVIP,implicated in crime and an associate ofZhou.

A number of serving police and border force officials includingAndrew Ure andGreg Leather were moonlighting doing security work for Crown junket operators.

Huang Xiangmo,the political donor ASIO expelled from Australia over his foreign influence activities,was an $800 million-a-year Crown high roller and such a big punter that Crown used him as a case study of the benefits of uber-wealthy Chinese gamblers moving to live in Australia.

Australia’s peak criminal intelligence agency,theAustralian Criminal Intelligence Commission,announced a sweeping investigation into organised crime in Australian casinos.

Alvin Chau, the chief executive and co-owner of Crown Resorts'major junket partner,Suncity had been blocked by Home Affairs from entering Australia over alleged links to organised crime.

Victorian gaming ministerMarlene Kairouz announces an investigation into the “serious allegations that must be investigated” relating to Crown.

Crown’s high-roller agent partner,Song Zezhai,had been named in a Chinese court as running a large illegal gambling syndicate in eastern China that engaged in extortion.

Drug traffickers used two private companies,Southbank Investments Pty Ltd andRiverbank Investments Pty Ltd,both set up by Crown Resorts with Crown executives as directors,to bank suspected proceeds of crime including drug trafficking and money laundering.

NSW Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority announces a public inquiry with royal commission powers into the casino giant and"its close associates".

Joseph Wong,a businessman blacklisted by the UN and Australia because he funded a war criminal,was a Crown Resorts high roller who gambled millions in its VIP rooms even though he was subject to international sanctions.

An inquiry by theNSW Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority began with an outline of multiple probity and legal issues. James Packer was slated to give evidence.

Crown Resorts'most senior board memberJohn Alexander stepped down as executive chairman as part of sweeping governance overhaul.

Hong Kong gambling giantMelco Resorts,run by Lawrence Ho bailed on its plan to build up a large stake in James Packer's casino group Crown Resorts.

Tom Zhou had been arrested in January and extradited to China for suspected money laundering and corruption.

FOI documents revealed Crown casino's"special arrangement"with theAustralian government gave Chinese high rollers access to fast-tracked visas and allowed Crown itself to vouch for people's character.

Tom Zhou in 2017 had been involved in a plan to buy the Vanuatu casino resort using a company that involved Zhou’s child as a director,along with the former chief lawyer for Sydney’s The Star casino,Michael Anderson. There is no evidence that Mr Anderson has been involved in or knew about any wrongdoing.

Crown announced a 34 per cent dive in VIP turnover in the six months to December 31,which drove a sharper than expected fall in underlying profits. It blamed “weak high-roller market conditions and negative publicity”.

Cheng Ting Kong,Co-owner of Crown and The Star’s junket partner Suncity,was on the Australian Priority Organisation Target list in around 2017,putting him among a select group of suspected regional crime bosses that the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission has assessed “represent the top tier of groups involved in serious and organised criminal activity.”