NICC Extends The Star Sydney Casino License Suspension Until June 2027

The New South Wales Independent Casino Commission (NICC) has pushed The Star Sydney’s suspended casino licence out to June 2027, saying the operator still has not shown that its governance, leadership and culture remediation is complete. For high-risk payments people, the signal is simple: regulators are still treating control failures as an ongoing live issue, not a box ticked in 2022.

1. Star Sydney has been operating under a suspended casino licence since October 2022, after the Bell inquiry found the operator unsuitable because of serious failures in money laundering controls, governance and compliance.
2. NICC Chief Commissioner Philip Crawford said Star Sydney had made significant progress in addressing regulatory issues, but he was not convinced those improvements would be sustained. He also said it was disappointing that the group company continued to experience issues affecting each of its properties.
3. Crawford said the NICC would closely monitor how The Star Sydney and The Star Entertainment dealt with the issues, and that both companies needed to show they had learned from past mistakes and could resolve cultural issues without further intervention from the regulator. In other words: on paper, remediation; in practice, proof.
4. The backdrop is the 2022 controversy involving alleged misleading disclosures to the National Australia Bank over suspicious transactions involving more than AUD 900 million (about $664 million). That led to the Bell Inquiry, headed by SC Adam Bell, and the original suspension of The Star Sydney’s casino licence.
5. The initial suspension was meant to last until March 2025, but the NICC added 6 months, and later added more extensions. The current deadline is June 2027. The regulator also pointed to ongoing civil proceedings with AUSTRAC, which has alleged serious and systemic breaches of Australia’s anti-money-laundering laws and is seeking an AUD 400 million (about $281 million) penalty; the factual matters were resolved ahead of a penalty hearing in June 2025, but the Federal Court has not yet issued its final judgment.

The NICC has also already fined the operator AUD 10 million (about $7.2 million) earlier this year, which keeps The Star in the uncomfortable category of “still fixing the old problems while the new ones keep arriving.” For PSPs and acquiring banks, this is the part that matters: a suspended licence, an unresolved AUSTRAC case, and repeated regulatory extensions all point to continuing counterparty and reputational risk.