Insiders say loan sharks openly roam the gambling floors looking for heavy losers. Photo / Chris Skelton

Insiders say loan sharks openly roam the gambling floors looking for heavy losers. Photo / Chris Skelton

A young student is whacked about the face by another woman outside Auckland's Sky City casino.

This is no catfight over the pokies: the student is in debt to the other woman's husband - a loan shark. She could not pay off the $2000 she borrowed at 7 per cent interest a week.

Gambler "Ken" well remembers the fight and the young woman.

He saw her back in the casino the next night with a bruised face. And he has seen her again and again ever since: she is now an agent for one of the many loan-shark syndicates that Ken and others say openly roam the casino floor offering loans to heavy gamblers.

A Weekend Herald investigation documented the presence of loan sharks in Sky City. With it came stories of Korean and Taiwanese girls pimped into prostitution, of young Chinese men forced into drug dealing and of a student faking his own kidnapping so his parents could pay off his debts through the "ransom".

Ken, who does not want to be identified, says the heavy scene has been part of the casino's VIP gaming rooms for years.

He should know: he claims to have borrowed and lost hundred of thousands of dollars from loan sharks. It all but ruined his life for a time, although the harrowing details would clearly identify him so it was agreed not to outline them.

"You can just describe it as pitiful," says Ken. "Pitiful."

The Sky Tower is firmly established as an icon of Auckland.

Yet Sky City's grudging acknowledgement of the presence of loan sharks and this week's sudden departure of chief executive Evan Davies after criticism of the company's financial bottom line has again raised questions.

And the Auckland operation is not alone: Christchurch Casino - in which Sky City has a 40 per cent stake - is subject to a Department of Internal Affairs inquiry into allegations of loan sharks and money laundering made by its former acting chief executive Stephen Lyttelton, who quit three weeks ago and is now in a bitter public row with an industry he calls "a weeping sore full of pus".

There are calls from Green MP Sue Bradford and the Problem Gambling Foundation for a full public inquiry into the 13-year-old casino industry.

The glitter has certainly gone.

The industry's headlines so far this year could not be further from those on Sky City's opening night in 1996, where it promised "glitz aplenty".