Shock horror, ASIC jails two people in a day - almost


February 2, 2010

Dear Mayne Report subscribers,

sorry to follow up on the WA News scoop earlier in the day, but after putting in a shocker in 2007, the corporate plod is setting all sorts of records for jailing crooks this afternoon and is even cracking down on margin lending disclosure.

Well, not quite, the TEAC Australia finance director Ken Evans got 30 months but it was wholly suspended. The ASIC press release went out at 1.42pm.

Better news was that Brisbane lad Randoph Jude got 12 months of actual jail time for fraud in a release that went out at 6.03pm.

I spent a couple of hours in a small room with ASIC chairman Tony D'Aloisio and a dozen other people yesterday but it was Chatham House rules so can't say anything else.

Tony's spindoctors are certainly working very hard this afternoon, because the big disclosure and margin lending crackdown in conjuction with the ASX went out in this press release at 4.59pm.

People should go to jail for some of what's been making headlines in recent weeks, but we've been crunching the numbers and last year was ASIC's second worst for the Howard tenure in terms of jailing corporate crooks.

The full list of ASIC's 316 jail victims is here and the numbers break down as follows.

1991: 6
1992: 8
1993: 13
1994: 10
1995: 24
1996: 16
1997: 22
1998: 22
1999: 21
2000: 32
2001: 18
2002: 22
2003: 15
2004: 28
2005: 18
2006: 20
2007: 17
2008: 4

Click through to the web edition to see it graphically and have a great weekend.

Do ya best, Stephen Mayne

* The Mayne Report is a multi-media governance website published by Stephen Mayne with occasional email editions. To unsubscribe from the emails click here.

ASIC's jail record as a graph