A banned Trio-linked adviser has accused the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) of misrepresenting his wrongdoings, also pointing to political ties which he claimed may have impacted legal proceedings against him.
Ross Tarrant of Tarrants Financial Consultants invested more than $23 million of its clients' funds in Astarra Strategic Fund (ASF), a failed managed investment scheme promoted by Trio Capital and Shawn Richard.
In November 2011, ASIC banned Tarrant for seven years on the basis that he did not comply with various financial services laws — a decision which was upheld by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) late last year.
In its media statement, ASIC wrote Tarrant's breaches included the failure to disclose in statements of advice the receipt of more than $1.1 million in marketing allowance from Shawn Richard for investing clients' monies in the ASF.
However, in an email sent to various media outlets, Tarrant claims ASIC's case was that only $42,075 had not been disclosed, adding the regulator knew that full disclosure had been made on 450 occasions to 220 clients.
"I have disputed ASIC's figure of $42,075 undisclosed as my submission is that only $3,366 was undisclosed inadvertently," Tarrant wrote, claiming ASIC's wording led to nation-wide coverage, with some media outlets calling the regulator to either imprison, fine or have him repay the $1.1 million in ‘undisclosed kickbacks'.
"The disclosure or non disclosure of $3,366 or $42,075 of perfectly legal marketing allowance payments, has nothing whatever to do with the loss of $180 million to organised crime under the very noses of ASIC and [the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority] as seems to be lost on journalists as they jump on the bandwagon and attack the adviser."
Tarrant said that to date, 5,300 of 6,000 clients had been compensated on the basis that advisers believed Astarra was a low-risk investment "and this classification was confirmed by Shawn Richard under cross examination".
In his initial response to the AAT decision, the banned adviser expressed "great disappointment", also questioning whether what he calls "political interference" affected the proceedings.
