AMP fraud case opens up

More details have emerged of AMP Asset Management’s $600,000 fraud in the Melbourne office.

More details have emerged of AMP Asset Management’s $600,000 fraud in the Melbourne office.

Last December, Financial Synergy found a $200,000 anomaly in its Top Quartile Superannuation Trust (TQST), which is a wholesale investor in AMP’s Managed Treasury Fund and Balanced Stable Fund.

The anomaly was raised with the TQST trustee within 24 hours, as a very clever fraud was suspected.

Top Quartile Management director David Galloway says the company then spent a couple of weeks collecting evidence that a fraud had taken place.

“We questioned AMP and the more questions we asked, the stranger it became,” he says.

“We tried to gather as much written evidence to recover the money from AMP for our investors.”

The company alerted APRA and a full investigation was launched. Charges of fraud have not been laid yet, but legal action is expected.

Galloway says AMP was very co-operative and the missing $200,000 was paid back to the TQST.

It was found that an AMP Asset Management staff member, believed to be a client services manager, had defrauded a number of funds over a period of time. Top Quartile Management has been told by AMP that the amount defrauded is believed to be significantly greater that the quoted $600,000.

Galloway says some funds that were defrauded were only alerted when a fuller investigation took place.

“Financial Synergy believes the skills, training, dedication and hard work of our administration team were the key to detecting the fraud,” he says.

“The excellent communications between the trustee and administrator, as well as prudent separation of duties between members of the administration team, combined to identify the fraud.”

Galloway says it is a warning for all trustees to ensure their administration outsourcing arrangements are meeting industry best-practice and that their administrator has effective procedures in place to detect and report similar anomalies.