White Collar

The son of former ATO deputy commissioner Michael Cranston has been jailed for a minimum 10 years for his leading role in a $105 million tax evasion scheme.

Tax advisers and firms promoting tax avoidance could face penalties of up to $780 million, as part of a suite of reforms the government is calling “the biggest crackdown on tax adviser misconduct in Australian history”.

Companies could be on the hook for higher penalties for foreign bribery and other white collar offences after a High Court majority on Wednesday found a $1.35 million bribery penalty imposed on engineering firm Jacobs Group was inadequate.

The judge overseeing the receivership of Melissa Caddick’s estate has pushed off a dispute about a collection of sneakers held by the deceased fraudster’s teenaged son, including one pair that could be worth up to $12,000.

An investment manager has been arrested and charged with providing prospective investors with forged portfolio reports.

An appeals court has taken Pitcher Partners to task in its appeal seeking to throw out a lawsuit over the accounting firm’s alleged involvement in race car driver Max Twigg’s misappropriation of $127 million from his family. 

Former director of event management company the Human Group, Helen Rosamond, has been sentenced to a 15-year aggregate term of imprisonment for defrauding NAB of $19 million, and will have to serve eight years of the sentence behind bars.

Norton Rose Fulbright has snagged a class action lawyer with decades of US legal experience and elevated an arbitration expert who worked at a New York white shoe law firm to be partners in its Sydney and Perth offices. 

The operators of a childcare business have failed to persuade a jury that a press conference by the Australian Federal Police about an alleged multimillion dollar government benefit fraud was defamatory.

A judge has allowed the applicants in a class action against a law firm extra time to file evidence after the death of the solicitor on record, despite protests from the firm, which is accused in the case of liability for the alleged fraud of a former employee.