The casino’s former chief risk officer,Paul McWilliams,told the inquiry Mr Bekier slammed the KPMG report onto a desk at a meeting of the company’s audit committee in May 2018,declaring it was “unacceptable for the report to be prepared in this way” and was factually “wrong”.
KPMG partner Alexander Graham said that at a subsequent meeting,Mr Bekier was “essentially berating us for the whole entire time” while disputing his findings.
“I recall the CEO turning over pages pointing to things saying ‘this is wrong’,turning the page,‘that is wrong’,” said Mr Graham. He described the attitude as “surprising” given the firm had gone through a “comprehensive process” to compile the report.
”I would expect a CEO to have an appreciation of … the findings we’d raised,” he said.
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But in an extraordinary move,Star re-engaged KPMG to consider 22 concerns it had about the final “independent” report - something Mr Graham said he had never been asked to do for any other client.
KPMG wrote to Star again in August 2018 saying that it stood by its original findings that the casino group was fundamentally failing to adequately tackle money laundering risks.