These contraventions occurred between July 2010 and “at least” mid-2013, ASIC said, and were uncovered by ASIC’s ongoing investigation into a property and SMSF promoting group which included two companies formerly known as Sunpac Finance and Heritage Financial Solutions.
ASIC said Mr Dimitropoulos was the sole director of Sunpac Finance “at all relevant times” and was “an integral person” in Heritage Financial Solutions’ management despite never being appointed as a director.
Mr Dimitropoulos was found to have been involved in general conduct obligations breaches by both Sunpac Finance and Heritage Financial Solutions, was involved in the latter conducting business without a licence, made false statements to ASIC regarding Sunpac’s compliance procedures and engaged in conduct that “demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of and regard for compliance with the law”.
“ASIC will act to protect the interests of investors, particularly in the growing SMSF sector, by permanently removing those whose conduct falls short of the required standards,” said ASIC deputy chair Peter Kell.
“Spruikers who recommend people invest in property via SMSFs, or facilitate such an investment, and who do not have an Australian financial services licence are breaking the law.”
I patiently await the banning of a major property spruiker from Sydney pre selling their developments and telling me to use a SMSF they will start and to insure with them the home is Sydney for market value and contents with a premium of less than $1,000. nothing added up. kept getting calls weeks later to start a SMSF to buy it and all done through them. I reported this soon after to ASIC which is now some years ago. Hoping in the next few years they will be challenged on this practice.
Unfortunately there are a lot of operators that aren’t necessarily promoting the use of SMSFs to purchase residential property but are ruining people’s financial futures. They are generally under the guise of ‘wealth seminars’ or ‘investment seminars’. They are light on details, tell people “they are screwed” and direct attendees into buying house and land packages for which the operators get paid a large commission.
ASIC, please stop this activity and if you don’t have the power to do so please lobby the Government so that you can. It will change a lot of people’s lives.
That’s one down. How about the other 50,000 or so accountants and real estate agents providing recommendations to buy property in an SMSF?
Congrats to ASIC. They must be so proud. They’ve managed to ban someone from doing something that he was unlicensed to do in the first place. Hopefully they’ve ripped up his unlicense to practice. And it’s only been 4 years or more since he stopped doing what he was unlicensed to do in the first place. What a win. What a great use of the regulators resources. Surprised that it’s a permanent ban and not just a 4 year one, backdated to the date of the last suspected offence. That way he could be ready to start giving unlicensed advice again.
Note to all you accountants out there. ASIC will be right onto you for providing unlicensed SMSF advice. Sometime in 2021 going by this effort….. Be ready….