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PRESS RELEASE
Victims of Financial Fraud (VOFF Inc) Monday 25 March 2019
ORGANISED FINANCIAL THEFT - REGULATORS SHOULD BE IN HANDCUFFS
The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA),
which is meant to redress victims of bank misconduct, is run by the banks and is not accountable to
Parliament. BFCSA conclude that AFCA is designed to continue the protection racket the
government and regulators have been running on behalf of Australian banks.
According to Denise Brailey of the Banking and Finance Consumers Support Association (BFCSA),
Treasure Peter Costello attended the 2005 Macquarie Bank seminar that encouraged financial
advisers to target the asset rich income poor (older people who own their home). Does this mean
Treasury knew about the ARIP strategy (asset stripping) and did nothing?
With tens of thousands of banking victims and a $75 million banking royal commission, that only
scratched the surface, VOFF see the Trio Capital fraud in a new perspective.
The Australian Securities Investments Commission (ASIC), the Australian Prudential Regulatory
Authority (APRA) and the Treasury Department controlled the Trio narrative.
ASIC deflected attention away from the fact that the Trio perpetrator had lied on his licence application form to get an
Australian Financial Services (AFS) licence. ASIC verified no data for any licencee, leaving people vulnerable to white collar criminals.
Hart deceived ASIC, APRA, Custodians, research houses, a
star rating firm, an auditor, 150 financial planners and 6,092 Trio consumers.
Hart hid behind ASIC and APRA and the regulators legitimised his criminal activities.
Consumers accepted the licence was protection and they accepted the implied regulatory credibility.
But it was a false sense of security.
Consumers would have been BETTER OFF WITH NO REGULATORS
Consumers were harmed by ASIC’s ineptness that can be traced back to an interaction with the
owners of Trio well before the Trio scheme existed. Around 2002, ASIC was carrying out an
investigation into an alleged tax fraud by the Queensland businessman Steven Hart. Mr Hart’s
business paper trail led to the Hong Kong office of the American lawyer Jack Flader and Scottish
accountant James Sutherland.
ASIC travelled to the Hong Kong office, secured 100,000 documents
that would be used as evidence in the case. During this period, Mr Flader and Mr Sutherland’s names
were already on ASIC’s company registration database, they were the owners of a holding company
they had registered with ASIC in 2001.
Clearly ASIC failed to recognize that it already had Mr Flader and Mr Sutherland’s names on its
database. It was not until November 2003 that Flader and Sutherland’s holding company purchased a
Trust fund in Australia that eventually became the Trio Capital Limited scheme. By early 2004, Trio
had the necessary licence to operate and handle superannuation savings, opening the way for a
disaster to hit thousands of hard-working honest Australians.
Barrister Niall Coburn claims, "You can't have people lying to ASIC because it undermines the whole
system we have to protect the trillions of dollars we have put away in superannuation for our elderly."
ASIC was indeed lied to and the deception caused a systemic failure of the financial system. The Trio
victims deserve redress after the shocking harm they suffered.
John Telford
Email: johnt@1earth.net
Phone (02) 4283 5755
R Gallagher Executive Member VOFF Inc
Mobile 0417 415 675