SkyCity Auckland has been ordered to cease operations for five days by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA).
SkyCity has “reached an agreement with the Secretary for Internal Affairs to resolve the Secretary's application to temporarily suspend SkyCity's casino operator's licence and as part of the agreement," agreed to “close the gambling area of the SkyCity Auckland casino for five consecutive days in 2O24.”
SkyCity admits it “did not meet the requirement in the SkyCity Auckland Host Responsibility Programme (HRP) and therefore the licence, relating to the detection of some incidents of continuous play by the customer due to a design error in a technology system developed by SkyCity to monitor continuous play by carded customers.”
It has also acknowledged that it “failed to exercise the level of vigilance required by the HRP to use staff observation and intervention independently and alongside that technology to identify those incidents of continuous play by the customer and then act appropriately.”
SkyCity has formally apologised to the Secretary of Internal Affairs and has since rectified the above-mentioned design error.
SkyCity New Zealand COO Callum Mallett said “SkyCity places great importance on host responsibility and takes these failures very seriously. On behalf of the SkyCity Board and management team, I accept and apologise for these failures.”
Callum Mallet was previously the Interim CEO before Jason Walbridge’s appointment. He has now resumed his role as Skycity New Zealand’s COO.
SkyCity has recently implemented various measures to ensure compliance to regulations, including this latest measure against money laundering.
