Responding to questions on notice from the parliamentary joint committee on corporations and financial services, ASIC said 10 emails related to the audit of Mr Shipton’s expenses had been sent in late to the Australian National Audit Office, on 16 October 2020.
Auditor-General Grant Hehir told the committee in November last year that he had been forced to escalate the expenses matter to Treasury after ASIC’s processes in response to the expenses audit “weren’t adequate” and management had failed to provide assurances that it had handed over “all relevant information” when the audit was taking place.
The regulator said the late emails in question related to exchanges between Mr Shipton and KPMG, the firm responsible for his $118,000 accounting services bill. A further email chain related to correspondence between Mr Shipton and a Treasury staff member, ASIC said.
At a hearing of the committee in November, ASIC acting chair Karen Chester said the emails had been delivered late because they were only available through a personal computer of Mr Shipton that he did not have access to during Victoria’s lockdown.
“Mr Shipton was based in Harvard at the time of his appointment being announced, and some of the emails were from his private email address, both then and later,” Ms Chester said at the time.
“They were on a laptop that he had to get access to in the middle of COVID. The laptop was not in the Melbourne district when we were all in lockdown. It was actually at a residence outside, so it was difficult for Mr Shipton to get to it.”
Ms Chester was further questioned by Labor MP and committee member Patrick Gorman as to why ASIC or the other parties to the emails did not have access to pass them to the audit office.
In the responses on notice, the regulator noted that seven out of 10 emails that were sent in late had been accessible through the ASIC server, but that they had not been deemed as essential for the audit office to make an assessment of Mr Shipton’s expenses.
“The remainder of the emails were identified… as providing context to the matters reviewed by the ANAO and they were provided to the ANAO on that basis,” ASIC said.
The news comes following the receipt of the independent report from former inspector-general of intelligence Vivienne Thom into Mr Shipton’s expenses at the end of December.
Treasury has confirmed it is considering its response to the report.
118k accounting bill. Might have been cheaper to just pay the tax.
looks like a bribe money
If they can’t regulate themselves let alone their own management how can they effectively and efficiently regulate others? Simple answer is they cannot. C’mon WTF.
What a load of rubbish. These are just lies and misleading- Karen Chester has no credibility or ethics either. The whole of ASIC is tainted. How can the government and industry trust ASIC as a regulator when it acts unethically.
Sorry Karen, nearly as good as the dog ate them. That critical emails were sitting on a personal laptop somewhere not near Melbourne and not accessible due to covid restrictions is total bulls***. You know and I know that Shipton would have been able to log on to his email server remotely whatever software he uses.. ASIC got caught out. End of story.
Well said, exactly my thoughts. This is utter BS and a pathetic attempt to make excuses – in other words exasperate the illegal act with further lies.
Why are they covering for him? Sounds like the rot is in the culture for them to be continuing to attempt to cover up.
Either that or else their systems, checks, policies and security are all utter BS as well (stuff that we would lose our livelihoods and businesses over if audited by ASIC).
For the head of ASIC to have any of the emails on a personal email address or personal machine should also be a breach, but as you say, it is all BS as everyone can access all personal emails from any location in the world. You can’t tell me that ASIC staff didn’t notify this scumbag while he was on a junket to Harvard in the US (who paid for that btw?) and that the head of ASIC couldn’t have had one of their ASIC IT staff access it on his behalf at the absolute worst case.
Good on the National Audit Office! Love to buy the responsible people a beer – and hopefully this enquiry gets their full uncensored version of what actually occurred and the arrogant ignorant attitude of ASIC is better expressed and exposed.
ASIC is corrupt.
Adviser’s would be immediately banned, if they submitted late emails to an ASIC audit.
But of course these same rules don’t apply to ASIC that can do whatever the hell they like:
– Dodgy remuneration to ASIC top dogs, no banning orders issued to anyone in ASIC.
– Delayed and purposely avoiding audit information, no banning orders to anyone in ASIC.
And the dodgy ASIC list goes on and on with zero consequence:
– Pay for Comment dodgy academic FARSEA reports, not disclosed and no penalty.
– SMSF False Fact sheet with SMSF expenses listed at 3 times the real expenses, when proved wrong no admission of it being wrong and no follow up production of a correct SMSF Fact Sheet.
– ASIC Dodgy Life Insurance Churn Report 413, that purposely chose a very small know set of Life Insurance Churners to force LIF implementation. Only for ASIC to say post LIF that Churning was not a real problem.
The list could go on and on……………
[b]Total Regulatory Capture Corruption of ASIC’s hate for Advisers and unwavering support for all things Industry Super in every way it behaves. [/b][b][/b]
When will ASIC ever be held accountable ? NEVER !
this bloke was stealing tax payers money get rid of him
So if they are person l emails, they are personal expesnes.
Case closed.