ASIC bans CommFP planner's assistant
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has banned a Commonwealth Financial Planning (CommFP) employee from providing financial services after finding she had created false documents for client files.
The regulator found that Rebecca Locksley of Merewether, NSW, had been the servicing planner of banned former CommFP adviser Jade Zaicew from 2011 to 2012.
An ASIC investigation found that Locksley had "engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct between February 2012 and May 2012, when preparing documents for Zaicew's file.
"Locksley prepared file notes containing fictional conversations between Mr Zaicew and his clients to give the impression that the files were in proper order and that Mr Zaicew had given advice to clients in accordance with the law," ASIC said.
"While Mr Zaicew was suspended from CommFP, Ms Locksley also prepared and backdates around 40 other documents, including records of advice, to give the impression they had been prepared at the time of the clients' transactions."
Zaicew was banned from providing financial services for seven years in April 2014, after ASIC found that between August 2011 and May 2012, he engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct by:
- conducting unauthorised transactions on several client accounts
- including false information in three documents for the purpose of recording client instructions that were not in fact given, and
- backdating four records of advice contained on client files.
ASIC also determined that Mr Zaicew should be banned from engaging in credit activities because:
- he is not a fit and proper person to engage in credit activities in light of the misleading and deceptive conduct he engaged in while at CFPL, and
- he caused his company Lifeguard Private Wealth Pty Ltd (Lifeguard) to breach the credit legislation by representing on the company website that Lifeguard was able to engage in credit activity in circumstances where it was not licensed to do so.
AUTHOR
Nicholas O'Donoghue
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