Former Australian Officials Faces Further Gambling Probe

AUSTRALIA – As reported by the Australian: "Aboriginal leaders have called for a further investigation of the gambling habits of former ATSIC deputy chairman "Sugar" Ray Robinson following the disclosure that he had turned over almost $5 million at Queensland casinos over a 30-month period.

"Mr Robinson has claimed that most of the $4.8 million he put through Conrad Jupiters casino on the Gold Coast and the Treasury casino in Brisbane between July 2000 and December 2002 was money he had already won at the machines, but former ATSIC commissioners Terry O'Shane and Jim Hagan said yesterday that Mr Robinson needed to give a full account of where the money had come from.

"…Mr Hagan, who is based at Toowoomba on the Darling Downs, near Mr Robinson's western Queensland home at Charleville, said: 'Someone's really got to be accountable for all that money and where it's gone. '

"Mr Robinson, who resigned from his ATSIC post last June after becoming embroiled in a controversy over several organisations he was involved with in southwest Queensland, was not taking phone calls from The Australian yesterday, but he told AAP at the weekend: 'I was gambling with my own money. Why is gambling a problem?'

"Mr Robinson said the figures reported in The Weekend Australian were exaggerated and showed total gambling turnover rather than the money he lost…"

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