According to a statement from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, Kevin Maxwell George Whitting provided “inappropriate advice to five investors” when he was employed by Shelbourne Financial Services on the Mornington Peninsula.
The advice was given to five investors who collectively invested $684,000 in the Blue Diamond Deposits Trust No. 1 (BDT) between September 2008 and January 2009, a managed investment scheme which collapsed in 2010.
Whitting is to appear again in the Dromana Magistrates Court on 13 June 2013.
Without knowing any of the facts of the story, and whether this whole thing was shonky or whether it was just another product that blew up, my concern is where do we see accountants, solicitors or real estate agents charged for inappropriate advice when their recommendations prove grossly wrong? “Sure buy the property it willl rise in value not fall”, “sure create a SMSF or company structure they are always a good move”…. God help us all if ASIC have gone tyrannical or authoritarian in it’s perception of it’s role under the current leadership (and it appears that here is more & more evidence to support this impression).