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The former chief financial officer of The Star Entertainment Group has accused the company of plotting to misconstrue the group’s financials and called out chief executive Robbie Cooke for allegedly hiding the extent of its debt struggles from the broader executive team.
Christina Katsibouba, whose resignation was suddenly announced late last month, told the Bell inquiry into the company’s culture that she had wanted to leave the group since about June last year after becoming increasingly uneasy about the way business was conducted.
The Star’s former chief financial officer has accused her former boss of failing to be transparent about its financial position. Credit: Steven Siewert
Adam Bell, SC, is conducting a second inquiry into The Star’s suitability to operate its Pyrmont casino after the regulator, the NSW Independent Casino Commission, said it was unconvinced the company had committed to enough cultural change since it was last disgraced by Bell’s first inquiry in 2022. Public hearings, with appearances from former and current executives at The Star, began on Monday and will run for the next three weeks.
Katsibouba is one of five executives who were promoted or kept their positions after holding senior positions when the struggling casino giant was dubbed by Bell a “case study of unethical conduct”.
Among a series of serious revelations on Tuesday, Katsibouba said The Star’s head of investor relations, Giovanni Rizzo, asked her to doctor the businesses’ half-year results in February so that $3.2 million in lost cash Star Sydney accidentally gave to its customers would be hidden.
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“In November and December, the earnings were not quite the run rate of the earlier months. If this amount was presented as being booked during that period, it would appear to have been an otherwise good month,” she said when asked about the rationale for misconstruing when the broken machine loss occurred.
Katsibouba said Robbie Cooke was at the meeting and did not say anything to stop the suggestion to attribute the loss to December instead of June, but she did not comply.
The Star’s special manager, Nick Weeks, argued on Monday that the Sydney casino had failed to fix a broken “ticket in, cash out” machine that allowed customers to take out $3.2 million in cash they had not earned over a six-week period in June last year.