Kafka Confluent - Issue with Audit Log Configuration

Question

I am using Kafka Confluent platform 7.5.0 on-premises, hosted on a Linux Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS VM.
My goal is to capture all PRODUCE events and write them to the topic confluent-audit-log-events_produce.
I have followed the instructions outlined in the Confluent Documentation

Here are the configurations I added to the server.properties file, according to the documentation:

allow.everyone.if.no.acl.found=true
authorizer.class.name=io.confluent.kafka.security.authorizer.ConfluentServerAuthorizer

confluent.security.event.logger.enable=true

confluent.security.event.router.config= \
{ \
  "destinations": { \
    "bootstrap_servers": ["host_name:29092"], \
    "topics": { \
      "confluent-audit-log-events": { \
        "retention_ms": 2592000000 \
      }, \
      "confluent-audit-log-events_produce": { \
        "retention_ms": 2592000000 \
      } \
    } \
  }, \
  "default_topics": { \
    "allowed": "confluent-audit-log-events", \
    "denied": "confluent-audit-log-events" \
  }, \
  "routes": { \
    "crn:///kafka=*/group=*": { \
      "produce": { \
        "allowed": "confluent-audit-log-events_produce", \
        "denied": "" \
      } \
    } \
  } \
}

I start the Kafka Server using the command bin/kafka-server-start etc/kafka/server.properties, and it starts and runs fine without any errors on host_name:29092.

Next, using my custom Producer, I publish data to a topic on this Kafka Server, let's say user-topic. The data is successfully published to this topic. However, I expect the PRODUCE event to be logged to the topic confluent-audit-log-events_produce as configured above, but this topic remains empty.

Troubleshooting Steps Taken:

• Checked Kafka server logs for errors or warnings related to the audit log configuration. Found no obvious issues.
• Googled and attempted different configurations without success.

Could someone please help me understand what might be wrong with my configuration and how to properly set up the audit log for PRODUCE events?
I appreciate any guidance.