Pool champ and pokies boss face charges after investigation
New Zealand’s greatest-ever pool player, his now-dead wife and an influential pokie machine official involved in distributing over $15 million a year in funds have been charged with the alleged theft of gaming machine grants.
Twenty-time New Zealand pool champion Matthew Edwards is one of four people charged by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) in a longrunning investigation.
Among the others were Edwards’ late partner and fellow pool champion, Molrudee Kasamchaiyan, who died in September of a brain tumour, and a senior sports official who has name suppression until trial next year.
The fourth defendant is Jinsheng ‘Jackson’ Rao, whose company Dawn Management has provided management services to four pokie trusts, which between them operate 671 pokies in 44 pubs and last year distributed $17.27m in grants.
Rao denies the charges, saying the grants in question were entirely legitimate and in keeping with DIA policy.
Rao has been in the DIA’s sights for some time.
The DIA’s director of gaming, Dave Robson, said in a statement that ‘‘other allegations involving Mr Rao’s involvement in the Class 4 sector remain under active investigation’’.
The present prosecution, launched in June last year, was over Rao’s ‘‘alleged involvement in the theft of Class 4 [pokie] grant funds’’ from the Dragon Community Trust.
He is a former director and shareholder of Dragon, but now runs what’s known in pokieland as a management company, Dawn Management, which sits between a pokie trust and the pubs to perform services like machine maintenance and grant management.
Dragon owns 135 pokies in nine pubs, and gave grants of $4.55m in 2021. Among the other trusts Rao has provided management services for are Rano, Milestone and BlueSky, giving him a pivotal role in the sector.
Rao is also chairman of the Auckland-based New Zealand Chinese Culture and Arts Foundation.
Peter Dengate-Thrush, the chairman of the industry body, the Gaming Machine Association (GMANZ), said he didn’t know about the specifics of the case, but GMANZ would suspend and ban anyone convicted of gamingrelated offences.