The Acting Attorney-General has made two appointments to the Federal Court, including the barrister representing ASIC in its high-stakes cases against Rio Tinto and GetSwift.
The director of now defunct foreign exchange and derivative trader Forex Capital Trading has been banned from providing financial services for 10 years after ASIC found he had a serious lack of regard for compliance while overseeing the firm’s Wolf of Wall Street-esque trading floor culture.
ASIC has fired back at iSignthis’ defence to the regulator’s claims that it violated the Corporations Act by not disclosing $3 million in one-off revenue related to integration agreements, saying it was not the job of its compliance officials to school the fintech on its disclosure obligations.
ASIC has launched its first case related to the COVID-19 pandemic, targeting personal lender ClearLoans for allegedly contravening the hardship provisions of the credit laws that resulted in “significant consumer harm”.
A judge has questioned fintech company Squirrel Super’s defence in ASIC’s case alleging it made false and misleading statements about returns on property investments, saying it “looked like a bit of a stretch” at first glance.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has told a judge there’s no chance it will admit to ASIC’s allegations that it accepted conflicted remuneration through the sale of its Essential Super product, likening the matter to ASIC’s failed ‘Wagyu and shiraz’ case against Westpac.
In another victory for ASIC in a case stemming from the banking royal commission, a judge has ruled that TAL Life Limited breached the Insurance Contracts Act after denying coverage to a cancer patient and threatening to recover $24,000 it had already paid to her.
After months of uncertainty and a scolding from the judge about “vague” excuses, former Linchpin Capital directors facing proceedings by ASIC and a class of investors have been given assurance that their legal costs will be covered under an insurance policy.
A judge has ordered that defunct Dover Financial Advisors and its former director pay $1.4 million in penalties for creating a misleading client protection policy he described as “an exercise in Orwellian doublespeak.”
GetSwift has triumphed in its bid to disqualify a judge who refused to recuse himself from hearing a shareholder class action against the logistics software company after presiding over ASIC’s civil penalty proceeding against the company.