ASIC moves against Centro directors and CFO
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The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has launched action against the directors, former directors and the chief financial officer of the Centro Property Group in the Federal Court.
The regulator said it had launched the civil action against the various entities making up the Central Properties Group and the Centro Retail Group, arguing that it was the responsibility of company directors and chief financial officers to take reasonable steps to ensure that information contained in financial reports and disclosed to the market is accurate, compliant with relevant accounting standards and not misleading.
ASIC said it was seeking declarations from the court that the directors and an officer breached their duties owed to entities within Centro, would be seeking orders to disqualify the directors and the officer from managing corporations and would ask the court to impose pecuniary penalties on them.
The ASIC action revolves around the financial reports of the Centro Group for the year ended 30 June, 2007, with the regulator contending that the reports contained material misstatements.
It said it would allege that a significant amount of interest-bearing liabilities of each of the relevant entities was wrongly classified as non-current liabilities rather than current liabilities.
ASIC said it would also be contending that the directors and the officer knew that the entities had very significant short-term interest-bearing liabilities, and should have known that these liabilities were incorrectly classified in the 2007 financial reports.
The directors named in the ASIC action are Brian Healey, a former chairman and non-executive director, Andrew Thomas Scott, a former chief executive and managing director, Samuel Kavourakis, a former non-executive director, James William Hall, a non-executive director, Paul Ashley Cooper, a non-executive director, Peter Graham Goldie, a former non-executive director, Louis Peter Wilkinson, a former non-executive director and Romano George Nenna, a former chief financial officer.
AUTHOR
Mike Taylor
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