James Packer’s slipped Crown: a victim of sleaze – and snobbery

Melbourne legend tells that days before Crown Casino opened senior police visited the next largest gambling place in town, a less than legal operation than ran in premises on the opposite side of the CBD — premises with plenty of exits into laneways — to tell them that the gig was up. Even Victoria Police could no longer turn a blind eye.

The entrepreneurial Italian gentlemen who ran that show have no doubt discovered how to milk Crown and its patrons in the subsequent years, as have others. Crown management, it appears, has been less than diligent in dealing with the seedy side of the business, so much so that yesterday New South Wales authorities found the company unsuitable to hold the licence for its Barangaroo…