The chairman of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), Greg Medcraft, has sought to defend his organisation's record and performance and claimed that under his chairmanship he has devoted a significant portion of the budget to jumping on problems before they get out of control.
However, in defending ASIC's performance, he has sought to stress that the regulator is loathe to jump on breaches of the Corporations Act which flow from criminal actions such as bribery because such matters must first be dealt with by the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
"My point is that in any foreign bribery investigation, criminal proceedings are the main game. ASIC cannot, and will not, do anything to jeopardise the success of criminal actions taken by the AFP. This is something the media has mostly chosen to ignore," Medcraft said.
It is often extremely difficult to run parallel investigations. It results in duplication of resources and added pressure on witnesses who may already be reluctant to help. In turn, it will typically result in investigators ‘tripping over' each other — achieving unsatisfactory outcomes for both the AFP and ASIC."
The ASIC chairman said he had made it his business "to devote a significant portion of ASIC's budget to proactively looking at industries so we can jump on problems before they get out of control.
"In fact, last financial year ASIC conducted more than 2,150 high-intensity surveillances. More broadly, ASIC's record on punishing wrongdoers is solid. Last year we completed 187 investigations, kicked 88 people out of the financial services industry, convicted 22 people and had nine sent to jail — and this doesn't even include our 528 summary prosecutions," Medcraft said.
