Enforcement

The ACCC’s 2022/23 compliance and enforcement priorities include manipulative or deceptive advertising in the digital economy, environmental claims and sustainability, and disruptions to global and domestic supply chains.

The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) has today withdrawn charges against Citigroup Global Markets Australia Pty Limited (Citigroup), Deutsche Bank AG and four senior banking executives.

The Australian Securities and Investment Commission has issued six sets of civil proceedings against Aussie banking giant Westpac, each set in respect of different investigations. If ASIC proves its cases, Westpac will be liable for civil penalties.

The USA's Securities and Exchange Commission has issued proceedings against Jose Luis Casero Sanchez alleging insider trading. That's not the interesting stuff.

Talk about walking in someone else's footsteps: the founder of an electric vehicles manufacturer is the subject of proceedings issued by the USA's Securities and Exchange Commission in respect of comments he made, especially on social media, about the company, its products and prospects. It's not Tesla: it's Nikola.

Don't blame us - we don't make stuff up, you know.

Google Ads - which is not the same as AdSense - is getting new policies in the UK.

They apply if you are what Google defines as a financial services business.

Do you agree?

One would have thought that Initial Coin Offerings had been a flash in the pan and already out of fashion. And that may, to a point, be so: their heyday was, of course, three or four years ago.

But the essential problem seems to be that things take a while to filter through so that, when stories reactivate interest, everything old becomes new again, to coin a phrase. So the news that a case relating to conduct in 2017 and 2018 may be the spark that reignites burning embers as some people remember the concept of the ICO and think "that might be a way to help my business that's struggling through the CoVid-19 Pandemic.

Ross Andrew Hopkins of Killara, New South Wales, Australia, has been sentenced in the District Court of New South Wales to a maximum period of six years’ imprisonment, with a non-parole period of four years following his conviction on a guilty plea for using clients' funds for his own benefit.

The Australian Securities and Investment Commission has alleged that unlicensed financial advice is being given in relation to the development of property by a company headquartered in Perth and that it relates to an unlicensed investment scheme. The facts as set out by ASIC imply other issues, too. ASIC has frozen the assets of Monica Kaur, MKS Property Investments/Developments Pty Ltd (MKS Property), Paradise Property Group Pty Ltd (Paradise Property) as well as against Sadu Singh, Melvin Paul Singh and Stephanie Lee. All but Lee have been banned from leaving Australia.

On 22 October 2020, following the settlement with prosecutors and regulators in the USA, the UK, Hong Kong and Singapore, the Board of Goldman Sachs, issued a statement on the affair.

It is published below, in its entirety, unedited.

On 22 October 2020, following the settlement with prosecutors and regulators in the USA, the UK, Hong Kong and Singapore, David M. Solomon, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, wrote a memorandum to all employees.

It is published below, in its entirety, unedited.

In a congressional hearing in 1987, US Congressman Norman F Lent of New York put it to the Chairman of the USA's Securities and Exchange Commission, John SR Shad that Rudolph William Louis ("Rudy") Giuliani, then the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, had a better public relations office than the SEC, it appearing that it was his office that had done all the work in the insider dealing case centred around Boesky, Milken, Levine and Drexel, Burnham, Lambert. Shad's explanation of the relationship which holds good today.

Société Générale Securities Australia is subject to criminal charges brought by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

SocGenSecAus? If you think that's silly, the acronym used by ASIC is worse: "SGSAPL". We'll just stick wiith "SocGen Securities".

It's there. In plain sight. In the body of the press release from the Australian Securities and Investment Commission. It's a statement that ASIC, having been found, damned by its own words and those of the industry, wanting in its supervision of the Financial Services Landscape, is taking the gloves off. It's not going to stand for any more poor compliance. It's going to make "ongoing efforts to improve standards across the financial services industry." So this case is going to be spectacular, isn't it?

It's not the best way to start the week, much less the month. The first notice from Australian regulator The Australian Securities and Investment Commission tells that Macquarie Securities (Australia) Limited has been issued a penalty notice : ASIC "believes" the company "contravened" market integrity rules. The failure was of design, implementation and maintenance of compliance systems, not an intention to not comply, ASIC says. Plus ça change in so much of the financial sector, then.