A PricewaterhouseCoopers partner has hit back at a lawsuit over her alleged involvement in a $3.3 million scheme to defraud her husband’s employer, saying she believed payments into her account were made under a personal loan brokered by her husband from a “wealthy friend” in China.
The son of the lawyer behind the Banksia Securities class action has effectively abandoned his appeal of a court judgment that found he knowingly and actively assisted his father in a fraudulent scheme to pocket almost $20 million in inflated fees and commission.
Stock broker Fortrend Securities has filed a suit alleging wealth manager Shaw & Partners sent unsolicited welcome letters to clients as part of a scheme involving two former advisors.
Japanese bank SMBC has foreshadowed an application to add claims against Humm Group after the fintech’s subsidiary allegedly misled the bank about receivables under contracts forged by a Forum Group entity.
Melbourne stockbroker Bradley Grimm has pleaded guilty to charges of dishonesty following an investigation alleging Grimm — whose wife is a former ASIC employee — fleeced funds from clients.
Two home finance companies and their father-son directors have been hit with $150,000 in penalties after a judge found they failed to cooperate with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority in an ASIC enforcement action and subjected AFCA staff to “inappropriate and unprofessional behaviour.”
Thomson Geer has lured a long-standing partner from Adelaide firm Finlaysons to lead its banking and finance team after its former banking head partner decided to end his 40-year stint with the firm.
ASIC commissioner Sean Hughes will step down next month after taking a role with investment manager Vanguard – which paid a $40,000 fine to the corporate watchdog just last month.
Retail giant Harvey Norman and consumer credit provider Latitude Finance have hit back at ASIC claims that they ran misleading ads for interest-free finance, saying reasonable consumers would have known additional conditions were laid out in the ads’ fine print.
A former director of Spaceship Capital Limited has succeeded in overturning a banning order imposed by ASIC, with a tribunal finding he may have been kept in the dark about the software bug that led to the ban.