ASIC Overhaul Called for After Massive and Continual Failure

The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) should be overhauled and investigated in light of the  unprecedented discovery and leak of more than 11 million documents by a group of international investigative journalists revealed the hidden financial dealings of some Australian companies and individuals. The question should be asked of ASIC, "What have you been doing all these years while all this questionable activity has been going on?"

​The revelations today are only the tip of the ice-berg as major Australian corporations such as Wilson Security are outed as potential wrong-doers. ASIC have been caught out as failing once again to investigate and stop corporate wrong-doing. While they busy themselves pursuing what should be civil cases (or no cases at all), making them out to be bigger so as to big note themselves and justify their existence, the big players go uninterrupted for years.

The revelation also concerns some of Australia's and the world's wealthiest people, including 12 current and former world leaders and 128 more politicians and public officials around the world.

More than 200,000 companies, foundations and trusts are contained in the leak of information which came from a little-known but powerful law firm based in Panama called Mossack Fonseca. The law firm is one of the world's top creators of shell companies, which can be legally used to hide the ownership of assets.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalism, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, said the cache of 11.5 million records detailed the offshore holdings of a dozen current and former world leaders, as well as businessmen, criminals, celebrities and sports stars.

​Given the incredibly large budget ASIC have to facilitate investigations into corporate wrong-doing, they consistently fail to do the job they are called on to do. Instead they pursue with extreme vigor and maximum destruction the individual small fish and completely ignore the actual corporate criminals.  This is mostly because it is too hard for them to catch the big fish and/or they are too lazy.

​ASIC regularly use the full resources of the State to target and destroy people and families who are not corporate criminals, diverting these resources from their intended task of stopping actual corporate criminals. Given that this International Consortium of Investigative Journalism, a nonprofit organization, was able to do their job for them, maybe the Australia government should remove ASIC's funding and outsource the work?

​The Australian
​ABC