James Packer Visits Casino Site after stepping Away from the Spotlight

Australian billionaire James Packer who was pushed to the point of a nervous breakdown following corruption in the ranks has returned to the site of his latest resort to assess progress.

Billionaire James Packer visited the $2.4billion Crown Resorts Barangaroo site in Sydney more than a year after he stepped away from the spotlight yesterday.

His mother, Roslyn, on Twitter, said that the billionaire is an “much better place” than when he resigned from Crown Resorts board in 2018.

James Packer visited the site with his girlfriend Kyle Lim to inspect his resort in Barangaroo.

He resigned from the board, among 21 other boards, in 2018 after three Australian Crown Casino employees were arrested in China for illegally promoting gambling, along with 16 Chinese employees. The three Australian staff were jailed and Crown Resorts paid the $1.67million fine ex gratia.

The Crown Resort legal issues seemed to compound the billionaire’s already fragile state-of-mind and in March 2018 he checked into psychiatric hospital in the United States.

However, legal issues weren’t the only problem in his life at the time -he admitted that he felt his life was spiralling out of control when the scandal emerged with his daily diet of vodka and prescription pills in 2016.

In May 2019 Packer sold 19.99 per cent of his Crown Casino shares to Melco Resorts and Entertainment for $1.76billion. He has since been on the road to recovery.

Crown Resorts is set to open before Christmas this year – three months earlier than scheduled.

Mr Packer credited the Crown team, developers Lend Lease and architects Wilkinson Ayre for their hard work in securing an early finish date for the project.

The Billionaire added that he is extremely happy with the resort which he feels will boost Sydney’s already booming economy and provide one of the best precincts in the world. He added that is the third jewel in Crown’s resorts in Australia providing thousands of jobs and attracting tourists from across the world. He purchased two floors of the hotel which will be converted into a home so he can spend more time in the city once the resort is finished.

Crown Sydney is a casino and hotel that is currently under construction in Barangaroo, Sydney, Australia and will be the second legal casino in Sydney, the other being The Star. However, unlike The Star, Crown Sydney’s casino will only operate with VIP membership restrictions and comprise of 75 floors (including mezzanines) standing at a height of 271.3 m (890 ft), becoming the city’s tallest building.