BFCSA Blog

BFCSA have lobbied long and hard for an Inquiry into ASIC, calling for one in 2001 as RECA.  Greg Medcraft Chairman of Australian Securities and Investment Commission, and also Chairman of IOSCO (International Org of Security Chiefs) has hit back at his critics of which our members are staunch by experience in their criticism of ASIC.   In fairness, we are happy to record Mr Medcraft's views of his own leadership and staff.  We do note however, that a boast of recovering $345 million, is embarrassing as over $400 million was lost in Westpoint, which ASIC sat on like a Mother Hen and did nothing for five years until its collapse.  It also fails to quantify the absolute losses ASIC has recorded as being well over $80 Billion, whilst ASIC slept.   Medcraft boasts that ASIC has banned 168 people in 3 years.....no LENDERS MENTIONED.   No criminal charges to assist in...

Do not become a victim of these "controlled frauds,"  dressed up as legitimate business.  A quiet AFR story on the weekend, made me sit bolt upright, thinking "here we go again!"  "ARIPs" are Asset Rich and Income Poor are a constant prime target for predatory tactics in the real estate and banking sectors.  Many retirees are only living on a modicum of income (eg $30k) which is a whopping $6,000 above the pension for a couple.  Yet predator sharks in the banking sector are circling your group!  You are classiified by money moguls who want more money - yours - as ARIP's.  You own your own home and unethical people will try and convince you, that you are better off in a wonderful retirement village.   If unsure, STAY WHERE YOU ARE.  Throw the well dressed promoter out into the street, along with his briefcase and laptop (full of unsavoury figures),...

Abraham Lincoln1863.. "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." No Time to Lose:- Train Your Watch-Dog to Bark again - without fear, nor favour. The Entire Nation Will Thank You. You'll rediscover the peace and quiet of living in your own home --- a privilege once lost, during the 'Sociopathic Period" when the Nation was over-run by nasty Bank$ters, with our highly requested Bark Enhancement Devices. Compared to other inferior Watchdog Endorsed Ponzi-like Products that are ineffective and shockingly inhumane, our "Bark-up" units (special this month only) are humanely designed, to give your Chairmen back his  BARK-UP, FRONT-UP TO Senator's Inquiries - care free kind of appearance! We even include our exclusive Chairman's Choice - YOUR Home or Money Back Guarantee! Good Life® Return Policy Don't worry, we've got you covered! In...

How can an expensive yet ineffective and lazy regulatory watchdog allow the corporate criminals of the banking sector who invented unaffordable loans by deception, to creep into your home and claim the asset as theirs?  Isn't that "home stealing?" Tomorrow the Senate will be questioning ASIC (Weds 20th), in the Senate Estimates Committee Hearings.  Lets hope some curly curve ball questions are thrown at ASIC as to whether they are underfunded to take banker criminals to court? If you were in Parliament tomorrow: what questions would you like to ask of ASIC? http://www.aph.gov.au/News_and_Events/LiveMediaPlayer?type=1&vID={060900B6-43E7-40AA-B939-7C12AAE5DBA9} Perhaps we would like to ask them  to donate the ASIC executive staffers' over-bloated salaries to the VICTIMS OF ASIC FUND.................? This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it....

Dear Member "In my opinion, ASIC is a maladministered agency with a bad culture that manifests in officers ignoring the law and not taking timely enforcement action, doing favours for professional colleagues in industry, concealing or manipulating information, and otherwise acting without integrity so that the agency can avoid responsibility for its regulatory failures." Members the above sentence is not mine. It belongs to Jeffrey Knapp a Lecturer in Accounting at the University of N.S.W. This man is a prominant authority and his submission 274 is just another damning insight into how useless and waste of tax payers money ASIC is. The one thing that is blatantly apparent from reading all the submissions is that ASIC's inaction has cost investors hundreds of millions of dollars, enough in fact to get this great country out of debt. All the different investment schemes and the banksters diabolical lending practices have cost this country...

Ever tire of hearing ASIC willbee's?  See how many times ASIC executives answered the Senators questions In Parliament with: "we will be."  Remember ASIC's bleating in 2004 "we will be getting tough with wealth creation spruikers."  Their idea of 'tough' and using Enforceable Undertakings is not the public's idea of getting tough and applying the law.  ASIC have power over criminal law and remedies, so why is it that those tools are rarely if ever used?   What's an EU?  Its a piece of paper signed by the crook and signed by ASIC Executives stating "ASIC agrees to shred the complaint, wipe the slate clean, drop the mention of misleading and deceptive and/or fraud and forgery and all is forgiven.  Criminal agrees to stand in the naughty corner and never transgress in the future."  Problem solved and, the victims can all go home....if they have one to go to.  Everyone happy.  Done...

Dear members In one of the latest Senate submissions, number248 a former ASC employee, ASIC's predecessor stated that when each states corporate affairs regulators merged to form the ASC and then ASIC that many junior staffers were promoted  three times within months to fill depleting ranks. He stated many of those inexperienced people now hold senior ranks. At this time staff were too concerned with inter office politics than the job in hand. He states ASIC is full of lawyers and very few people with market experience. If you don't know what documents are being used in an industry, broad requests for documents will only result in compliance people only complying with the notice and not the intention of the notice. Whilst at the ASC he witnessed this many times and it still applies today. The writer of this submission  left over fifteen years ago as a result of the deterioration of...

HomeSectionsBusiness Strategy Why ASIC is watching your Facebook page by Amy Rosenfeld | 07 Nov 2013 MOST VIEWED Why ASIC is watching your Facebook page1 comments Brokers need to be wary of what they put online – or face the consequences, say legal experts. Managing change: Is your brokerage ready? The mortgage industry never stands still and neither should your business. Learn the best strategies for successful transitions. My toughest test... with Josh Bartlett Each week MPA brings you advice from the industry's thought leaders on their biggest business challenge and how they tackled it. SPECIAL REPORTS 2013 Brokers on Non-Banks 2013 Brokers on Banks 2013 The Diversifiers Social media is categorized by brief, informal and often relatively impulsive messages. But brokers need to be wary of what they put online – or face the consequences, say legal experts. Regulatory bodies in the UK and US have recently made statements making plain...

Dear Members  The depth and breadth of the Senate submissions so far is quite astounding.  As you would expect the bulk are aggrieved borrowers and investors who through the failings of ASIC to do the very job they were created to do, failed dismally which resulted in many borrowers facing financial ruin. There is a huge cross section of Australian society involved, everyone from senior legal university academics, various law firms, business leaders, state and federal government agencies, banks, brokers, consumer groups and of course the multitude of victims and the list just keeps getting bigger. There are definite patterns forming, as expected all state and federal agencies have circled their wagons and given ASIC the thumbs up to protect their public service brothers and sisters.  The legal fraternity seem to favour them as well.  I suppose whilst ASIC exists there will be plenty of work for them. Its quite obvious  some submissions want to placate...

Well, well, boys and girls it looks like after many tireless years of Denise's and BFCSA persistence we have struck a raw nerve at ASIC. To rate a supplement to ASIC's submission to the Senate means they are finally hearing what we are all saying. To start compiling a list of counter claims to all our evidence reeks of desperation to save their own sorry skins. To use time as an excuse is preposterous by stating the falsehood that a lot of our members were PRE all these new regulations so that must deem them to be not appropriate, you do not put time limitations on a crime as if the passing of time wipes the slate clean. One of the most obvious pontificating ASIC statements is the complete onus on the brokers for the loans and LAF's, they are completely exonerating the banks and show where their allegiance lies. To...

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has isolated itself from key stakeholders and developed a “glass jaw” to criticism, according to leading directors and senior executives:  PUBLISHED: 31 OCTOBER, 2013:-  http://www.afr.com/p/national/asic_hit_by_deluge_of_criticism_VrF8LDdmeiHyUGuCVmidrK  ...

VOFF PRESS RELEASE 31st October 2013 FLADER – LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE BAHAMAS VOFF SLAMS ASIC AS INEFFECTUAL AND CALLS FOR A COMPLETE RESTRUCTURE OF ASIC MEDCRAFT MUST RESIGN The decision of ASIC to terminate its “investigation” into the role of Jack W Flader Jnr. into the Trio Capital fraud marks the end of an abysmal performance by the regulator in prosecuting its regulatory duties to protect the Australian financial system. Flader was the Chairman of the Global Consultants and Services Group of Companies Limited, (GCSL) which he established in 2007 based in the weakly regulated jurisdiction of Hong Kong.  Flader and GCSL were critical links in the network of international hedge funds and investments that stole $120 million dollars from the Astarra Strategic Fund.  • In November 2009 the US District Court in South Carolina. found that a stockloan program involving the Jeeves Group and Flader had been...

On the 16th October, I lost a very dear friend in Graham MacAulay.  I met him as a man about to enjoy retirement, yet sitting in the creditors meeting of one of the company collapses generated by Richard Beck, John Whitehead and Norm Carey of Westpoint, I saw a man sitting holding his face with his hands, as close to tears as he could possibly get.  One thousand other people were sitting quietly in stunned disbelief.  Yet the collapse of the company, it became the first of eight heavily attended creditors' meetings for the same group that week in December 2005.  Yet the one piece of information that angered Graham the most, was yet to be revealed...................... I met a group of 50 people in the lobby and I said: "One of you has to be leader of this group as I am heading back to WA.  But I will assist and guide you...

By Sue Lannin Posted Wed 23 Oct 2013, 10:05am AEDT Home loan and credit card disputes most common complaints The majority of complaints were about banks in 2012-13. Disputes about home loans and credit cards were the most common complaints with 49 per cent of disputes about credit products or 12,408 complaints accepted by the Ombudsman, down six per cent from 2011-12. That is mainly because the number of financial difficulty disputes fell by nearly one quarter. Mr Tregillis says the decline was due to the introduction of new national consumer laws in 2010. "This appears to be a result of the improvements by the major banks and other financial service providers to their financial hardship programs over the last few years," he said. However, complaints about maladministration in lending cases more than doubled from 333 in 2011-12 to 706 disputes in 2012-13. This could include a bank failing to verify the income...

Bankers created the loans that are now the thorn in the side of ASIC regulators.  Banks were the engineers of the Products (Lo Docs and FULL Docs)  that became the catalyst for widespread lending.  I had one banker saying to me this morning "the fraud and forgery are irrelevant!"  Really?  I am afraid our members do not see it that way.  ASIC is trying to mumble it had no laws with which to prosecute banks pre 2010.  That is false - hence the High Court and six other similar cases were won by consumers (albeit with funding) against THE BANKS>  The Brokers were irrelevant in the fraud and forgery as the fact remained according to Judges that the Banks had a duty to reject unaffordable loans.  They had that obligation under the Banking Code of Practice.  Non Bank Lenders who are not members of the code (but ASIC does not warn the public of that minor problem) must...

Setting the record straight: ASIC, bribery and enforcement action   You can read the 9 page speech here http://www.asic.gov.au/asic/pdflib.nsf/LookupByFileName/Setting-the-record-straight--ASIC-bribery-and-enforcement-action.pdf/$file/Setting-the-record-straight--ASIC-bribery-and-enforcement-action.pdf   and another recent speech by Mr Medcraft   The future of financial regulation   Financial Services Council (FSC) Annual Conference 31 July 2013  You can read the 3 page speech here http://www.asic.gov.au/asic/pdflib.nsf/LookupByFileName/Future-of-Financial-Regulation-speech.pdf/$file/Future-of-Financial-Regulation-speech.pdf                                                                                                                                                                                                        ...

The submission is on page 8 of the LIST and hundreds more ready to be uploaded over the next two weeks....the largest count ever?  Plenty of reading for the Senators re ASIC's non-performance.  ASIC has enjoyed being impotent re Banking and Finance products for 14 years.  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Click on link for Senate Submissions list - http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Economics/ASIC/Submissions   See Michael West Story in todays Business Day http://www.smh.com.au/business/watchdog-asleep-on-australias-subprime-scandal-20131024-2w323.html    ...

There are hundreds and hundreds of submissions waiting to be "cleared" for publication, including mine.  Most of the submissions are regarding victims of bank fraud that ASIC had powers to address and contain and then irradiate.  ASIC failed on all levels and that is why the public collective cry for ASIC to be pulled down and rebuilt.  Spare a thought for staff at the Senate who have been lumbered with the greatest dump of submissions of discontent ever waged against a regulator.   This Inquiry is long over due and the submissions received are the proof.  The BFCA Submission has been received but may take several weeks to be loaded up on to the website. The very name ASIC implies "security in investment" and their role has been to ensure markets are not permeated with fraud and forgery and thereby instilling CONSUMER CONFIDENCE across the banking an finance industries.  Trouble, is the bodies are...

Let the Games Begin.  ASIC is at long last is being placed under a microscope: should it be scrapped or should it be rebuilt from the ground up?  One thing is for sure its not a boot maker's bootlace when it comes to handling consumer complaints.  Anne Lampe used to work for ASIC and is an excellent journalist, and she has thrown a bucket of slops all over ASIC and thoroughly deserved.  Read her submission on the Senate website.  Ours will be up in a couple of days.  Everyone will start blowing the whistle on ASIC's non compliance with its own laws.  In fact, ASIC executives became a Law Unto Themselves:  Fat cats in need of a shakedown.  There are thousands upon thousands of people who were left suffering ASIC's nonsense during the paste 14 years.  They have been paid over $6 billion these last few years, sitting on bloated salaries and doing very...

Dear members  With the final countdown for Senate submissions this week end its time to think about our next course of action which is Joe Hockey's root and branch investigation into the banking system. In theory this sounds promising but my fear is what will be the make up of the investigating committee, like all government investigations will it be stacked with former coalition politicians and serving or past  senior public servants and judiciary?. In the U.K. the Tory government had the Archbishop of Canterbury on its commission which to me is a good idea, to have a few senior church leaders input can't be a bad thing. The one thing we don't need is any of the regulators deadwood advising any sort of investigation. The banksters will have their high profile lawyers running defence for them and to have any government legal people mixing with the banksters lawyers is just too...