Crown Resorts employees including three top Australian executives have been held incommunicado since Chinese police executed a series of late-night raids at their homes across several mainland cities on Thursday.
The company, consular officials and distraught families have been unable to establish contact with the group.
More News Videos
- Video duration
- 00:31
Australian Crown staff detained in China
- Video duration
- 01:16
Trump claims polling places are rigged
- Video duration
- 01:10
Cannibals suspected of killing prisoners
- Video duration
- 01:01
Fire attack on North Carolina GOP office
- Video duration
- 02:43
Witness backs up Trump accuser Summer Zervos
- Video duration
- 00:25
Sara Connor moved from Denpasar police station
- Video duration
- 00:53
Bridge collapses near Bali, kills 8
- Video duration
- 01:12
Driver charged over deadly bridge crash
Australian Crown staff detained in China
Three Australians, including one senior executive, are among 18 employees to be detained. (Video courtesy ABC News 24)
Shanghai-based Crown employee Jiang Ling answered her door at midnight on Thursday to find five plain-clothed police officers outside her apartment.
"I kept saying ... 'Why are you here?'. They kept repeating 'Oh, your wife knows' and she didn't obviously… they finally said 'gambling'," Ms Jiang's husband, American expatriate Jeff Sikkema told Fairfax Media.
"The main thing that I understood ... they wanted to know was who her boss was and some of her other colleagues, just looking for names."
Do you know more? Email pwen@fairfaxmedia.com.au
In scenes bordering on the surreal, the police piled into the couple's living room, taking turns questioning Ms Jiang, who also goes by the name Jenny, while the television screened a movie she had just sat down to watch, Hong Kong classic God of Gamblers, starring Chow Yun-Fat.
After three hours, the sleep-deprived Ms Jiang, who helps Chinese high-rollers with their visa applications to Australia, was taken to the police station on the premise of further questioning.
Mr Sikkema has not heard from her since, and received a hand-delivered detention notice on Sunday, which said his wife had been formally detained on suspicion of "gambling crimes".
Ms Jiang's computer, laptop, iPad and mobile phones were confiscated.
"She does admin stuff, there's absolutely nothing illegal about what she's done … she expedites visas," Mr Sikkema told Fairfax Media in a telephone interview.
"I was astonished when I got the arrest notification because she's done nothing."
What Ms Jiang would not have known at the time was that similar Crown employee arrests were unfolding across major Chinese cities.
A visiting Australian executive was also picked up en route to Shanghai's international airport after attempting to flee the unfolding crisis.
At least 18 employees of billionaire James Packer's gaming empire are being held across China, though Fairfax Media understands a further eight related arrests have been made, potentially including Crown's Chinese customers.
It is understood the vast majority, if not all, of Crown's China-based staff are in detention, with senior Crown International executives scrambling to respond.
"I still don't know a lot of the detail, I really know very little, I can't say much. You should understand Chinese law, so we can't contact them," the division's president, Michael Chen, told Fairfax Media by phone, before hanging up.
Mr Sikkema told Fairfax Media he had to proactively approach Crown to receive help, and that his wife's arrest document was the first official document Crown and its lawyers had sighted.
As first reported by Fairfax Media, most senior among those detained was visiting executive Jason O'Connor, who heads up a program designed to lure "high-roller" gamblers to Crown Casino in Melbourne.
"Crown believes that Jason O'Connor, the head of Crown's VIP International team, is one of 18 Crown employees being questioned by Chinese authorities," a Crown spokesperson said on Sunday.
"To date, Crown has not been able to speak with our employees and is working closely with DFAT [Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade] to urgently make contact and ascertain their welfare.
"Crown is staying in close contact with and is providing support to the families of our employees in China and Australia."
A spokesperson for DFAT said Chinese authorities "have three days in which to notify of the detention of Australians according to the terms of a bilateral consular treaty".
In a statement later on Sunday, the Chinese foreign ministry confirmed there were Australians detained on suspicion of committing "gambling crimes", without specifying how many. It said the case remained under investigation.
The arrests come amid a sweeping anti-corruption crackdown in mainland China that has targeted the illicit flow of capital overseas through underground banks and casinos, particularly in the gaming enclave of Macau.
In the wake of that crackdown, overseas casinos have stepped in aggressively to court the lucrative business of high-worth Chinese gamblers – known as "whales" in industry parlance – who now avoid Macau.
While casinos are not allowed to legally advertise in mainland China, most foreign operators sidestep the ban by promoting the resorts and cities where the casinos are located.
But industry sources say the practice comes at great risk given public warnings from Chinese police, and the arrest of South Korean casino employees in China last year.
A similar brush with police prompted Las Vegas casino giant MGM to quietly shut its marketing office in mainland China several years earlier.
An influx of Chinese high-rollers appears to have buoyed Crown's operations in Australia.
In its latest financial results, the gaming giant said its lucrative "international VIP" program had surged in 2014-15, to a turnover of $71 billion, largely due to increased overseas marketing, helping to offset weaker revenues at its casinos in Macau.
Under Chinese law, those suspected of criminal offences can be detained up to 28 days without formal charges laid, and without family visitation.