The judge who dismissed the ACCC’s challenge to Pacific National’s acquisition of Aurizon’s Acacia Ridge Terminal in Queensland had no power to accept an undertaking by the rail operator as an answer to the competition regulator’s case, an appeals court has been told.
An ACCC officer who was heading up a team investigating alleged cartel conduct by ANZ Banking Group and three investment banks has admitted that the regulator may have made an ‘oversight’ in a letter of comfort offered to JPMorgan ahead of the bank’s immunity application in the case.
During another day of cross-examination in a criminal cartel case against ANZ and two investment banks, a key ACCC officer was accused of lying about his interrogation of a key cartel witness, with the officer insisting there was nothing “sinister” in his examination.
An ACCC investigator has come under fire from ANZ as the bank seeks to shoot holes in the criminal cartel action against it, with counsel for the bank accusing the regulator of “infecting” witness statements and erasing testimony that weakened its case.
A key officer from the ACCC involved in interviewing JPMorgan bankers during a cartel investigation that led to criminal charges against ANZ and two investment banks has denied allegations that he acted improperly during the investigation.
ANZ has won access to documents the bank claims are crucial to its defence in a high stakes criminal cartel case, but the Australian Securities and Investments Commission has flagged a possible appeal of the ruling.
A sideshow evidentiary dispute in a committal hearing in a landmark criminal cartel case against ANZ and two investment banks has drawn to a close, but not before testing the patience of a magistrate, who warned her ruling would be far from a “Rolls Royce decision”.
JPMorgan has taken ANZ to task for its “heroic endeavours to create an air of suspicion” around the conduct of ASIC and the ACCC prior to the filing of a landmark criminal cartel case, slamming the allegations as purely speculative.
A judge overseeing the first of what could be many shareholder class actions over Westpac’s anti-money laundering breaches — brought by class action specialists Phi Finney McDonald — has given other law firms a three-week deadline to notify the court if they plan to file competing proceedings.
Westpac is facing its first shareholder class action in the US following revelations that it violated anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism finance laws on more than 23 million occasions, in the first lawsuit to point the finger at the company’s executives.