Baoshan: Three Australian Crown Resorts staff who faced Baoshan District Court on Monday have been handed shorter than expected prison sentences after pleading guilty to the crime of promoting gambling.
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Crown's vice-president of VIP Operations, Jason O'Connor, from Melbourne, was sentenced to 10 months including time served, so is expected to be released in two months.
Four other staff members - Crown's head of China, Alfred Gomez, and three Chinese nationals - received the same sentence and should be out on August 14.
The two other Australians Jerry Xuan and Jenny Pan were sentenced to nine months including time served. They were among 11 staff and two former staff to receive nine months and will be out on July 14.
Three junior staff who had been on bail were released immediately.
Crown sources said the company was delighted with the "very, very good result", given the complexity of the Chinese legal system.
Australian consul-general for Shanghai, Graeme Meeham, informed media outside the court of the result of the trial.
Mr Meeham said "the terms of the imprisonment start from the date they were detained - October 14".
He said the Australian government had followed the case very closely and left the Chinese court in no doubt of their interest in the outcome.
The Australians were among 19 Crown staff charged in October last year over the promotion of gambling.
A large contingent of lawyers representing all the Crown staff emerged from the courtroom smiling but tight-lipped before being whisked away in cars.
A convoy of black Audis arrived to take the family members of the Crown staff and the bailed Crown employee Jenny Jiang and her husband Jeff Sikima away from the court after being released immediately.
Family members of the Crown employees had earlier arrived at the court in a fleet of silver vans, wearing smog masks and dark glasses as a shield from media cameras. They were shepherded from the vans and through a media throng in small groups by Crown security consultants.
An army of lawyers arrived one by one, then in larger groups, each forced to wait for the small security door to the court and detention complex to be opened.
Each defendant is understood to have a personal lawyer.
Asked about the condition of his clients, lawyer Zhai Jian replied "pretty good".
Zhai Jian, who had previously worked for Rio Tinto, was representing Gomez, who is a Malaysian national.
A Hong Kong man arrived at the court car park with a large bouquet of yellow flowers, which he said he hoped to present to his friend Tao Yin if she was released at the end of the day.
He said she had worked for Crown making arrangements for people to travel to Crown's Melbourne hotel.
"Whether the people were going to the casino or not, she can't control," he said.
Ms Tao was among those handed a nine-month sentence.
Crown has always argued it promoted its hotels in China, not its casinos.
Another of Ms Tao's supporters waiting for hours in the Shanghai heat in the car park wore a bright pink T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase, "Think Happy".
One family member said he was hoping for a verdict of a suspended sentence.
Australian media were not given access to a courtroom crowded with the family of the 19 accused.
The promotion of gambling is illegal in China, and the Chinese government has cracked down on foreign casinos attracting wealthy Chinese to travel overseas to gamble.
Crown has hired top Chinese lawyer Liu Haitao, of King & Wood Mallesons. He is credited with helping GlaxoSmithKline executives avoid prison in a 2014 bribery case that saw the British pharmaceutical company fined $US492 million ($650 million).
It is understood that Crown executive Karl Bitar, a former national secretary of Labor, is in Shanghai and had been working around the clock with a large team on the case.
Mr Bitar had established an understanding of the Chinese Communist Party while leading delegations of Labor figures to Beijing, where his role of general secretary of Labor had been highly regarded.
Fourteen Crown staff and two former employees have been in detention in Shanghai since October, when they were scooped up in a series of police raids.
Mr Bitar has been in Shanghai in the lead-up to the court date.