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Cooke denied a letter from the company in response to the findings was inappropriate, and said the response was not intended to be confrontational, contradicting Foster who said on Tuesday that the group should have responded differently.
“Interacting with the regulator is very important, and sometimes you do have to take a position and that’s often difficult and can cause issues. It’s not easy to take that position and reverse out of it,” Cooke said, adding that he did not intend to be confrontational but knew the response would be controversial.
“I’ve got to say, I don’t know how else the company could have dealt with it … I think the company was in a position where it needed to put things on the record,” Cooke said.
“I was trying to be co-operative with the regulator and to do it in a respectful way. I was trying to ensure the interactions between the regulator and the board didn’t contaminate into the wider team.”
Director Anne Ward said she understood the company’s response was presented to be “more combative than it should have been”.
The inquiry was also read an email Ward sent in January that thanked Cooke for their work on the response and deemed the November report from Weeks as “quite frankly amateurish and lacking supporting evidence”.
Ward said that she agreed with the response to the regulator but not its presentation, referring to the bolded and underlined sections, which she said inferred undue importance of particular points of disagreement.
Cooke left The Star last month, three days before the second Bell inquiry into the business was made public. He had been working as a non-paid consultant with The Star but said he was terminated from this position last week.
He denied his letter to staff announcing his resignation perpetuated a state of conflict between the regulator and the company. Cooke wrote to his 8000 staff on March 22 to advise he was stepping down because he believed the company would never be reinstated with its licence to operate its NSW casino so long as he remained at the helm.
“I see it as explaining why I’m going, which is transparent and open. Staff members wanted to know why I was going because it was a fairly unusual situation,” Cooke said.
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The Star’s former chief financial officer Christina Katsibouba, who left the company on the same day as Cooke, alleged last week that The Star’s head of investor relations, Giovanni Rizzo, asked her to hide losses accumulated in July when the group failed to stop $3.2 million from being unduly handed to customers. Katsibouba said Cooke was present at the time but did not say anything. Cooke said he did not recall this meeting.
“I have no recollection but whether a Type A charge was in November or July would not change the half-year accounts,” he said. He also denied the investor pack broke out the monthly earnings before interest, tax, depreciation or amortisation, so it would not have been a material change.
Cooke denied the board was unconcerned by the inquiry or the assertion aired by Weeks that it adopted a “fight back” stance.
“It was a pretty significant matter. There was a lot of consternation at the board when the inquiry was announced,” Cooke said.
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