Sonray CEO pleads guilty, awaits sentencing
The chief executive of collapsed advisory and brokerage firm Sonray Capital Markets, Scott Murray, has pleaded guilty in the Melbourne Magistrates court to charges originating from an investigation by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
The regulator announced late yesterday that Murray had pleaded guilty to six counts of false accounting involving fictitious deposits of $36,439,588 and US$9,779,395 and false withdrawals totalling $7,800,923.
As well, he pleaded guilty to two counts of theft totalling $2,256,500, one count of obtaining financial advantage by deception and one count of misleading an auditor concerning a capital injection of $5,200,000.
Murray faces a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment on each of the false accounting, theft and deception charges, with the charge of misleading an auditor carrying a term of five years.
He has been remanded on conditional bail to appear in the Victorian Supreme Court in early March on the condition that he surrenders his passport, that he not leave Australia or attend any point of departure in Australia and that he stays at his residential address.
Sonray entered voluntary administration in October last year and was placed into liquidation shortly thereafter.
AUTHOR
Mike Taylor
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