This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on February 2, 2016.

KUALA LUMPUR: Paul Phua, the Malaysian at the heart of a World Cup betting investigation, has surfaced in Australia, where he has been linked to a prominent casino in Melbourne.

Investigative journalism television programme Four Corners said in an ABC report that Phua, who was accused of running an illegal World Cup gambling ring in Las Vegas in 2014, was also a highly valued client of Crown Casino.

“Paul Phua is a major player, we know that he has links to some of the unregulated betting markets that operate in the Philippines,” Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Paterson was quoted as saying.

“The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) operation was able to bring out into the open some of the information that now is known around him, and it gives us great concern the sheer volume of money that passes hands in this area, of the organised crime links in that space as well.”

Paterson was referring to a 2014 investigation by the US FBI, which also raided suites occupied by Phua and his son at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas and seized items including mobile phones and computers.

The FBI also alleged that Phua is a high-ranking member of an Asian crime syndicate, the 14K Triad, although Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi subsequently wrote to the agency, clearing the gambler of any links with the triad.

Ahmad Zahid also said the poker star was assisting the government in issues of national security while a report by the South China Morning Post said Phua had reportedly received citizenship in Montenegro on the recommendation of the country’s president and had served as San Marino’s ambassador to the Balkan nation until his arrest in 2014.

In June 2015, a US judge threw out the case against Phua after refusing to let the government’s evidence be used at trial. Phua was allowed to leave the United States with his passport and US$48 million (RM199.68 million) private jet.

Phua, 52, and his son, Darren, 22, were among eight defendants charged in the multimillion-dollar betting scheme during the Fifa World Cup in 2014.

Prosecutors said Phua and his group had made a US$13 million profit in June and July accepting World Cup bets in the scheme, which stretched to Macau.

Phua and Crown Casino did not respond to Four Corner’s request for comments. — The Malaysian Insider