AMP and big banks and their CEOs are well and truly in ASIC's sights for criminal prosecution, or so ASIC chair James Shipton alluded last night.
Fronting a Senate Estimates Committee in Canberra, ASIC's leadership team supplied some of the answers Senator Malcolm Roberts from Queensland was looking for.
"What does it take a bank CEO or somebody big to be charged", was the gist of question from Roberts.
Roberts meant: "Thrown in the slammer under punitive conditions."
James Shipton, the ASIC chair, walked a delicate line in his answer.
"As regards penalties applying to individuals before for the courts," Shipton parried at first.
"We're working with the CDPP on cases, we are following cases, and we have ended up with instances of criminal conviction," Shipton said, citing the Intensive Corrections Order made in November against former Western Sydney NAB branch manager, Mathew Alwan.
Alwan will undertake 200 hours of community service and ongoing rehabilitation treatment, as part of the ICO.
The One Nation stirrers - and maybe the public - have their sights set way higher, and James Shipton knows it.
There is a "willingness in the right circumstances to pursue criminal actions, unimpeded," Shipton said.
What about anyone or any firm that "knowingly conspires with bank executives to cover up a crime?" Roberts demanded.
"That is something we will act on, pursue and investigate," Shipton said. This is no rhetoric, there are cases afoot he said, everyone knowing he means Westpac for a start, NAB, then CBA because they are the biggest and pretty lousy they were too on financial planning nonsense.
ANZ will feel it's share of the heat from ASIC, eclipsed by the biggest package of criminal and civil action that portends for AMP.
"Over the last 18 months, in general, we have asked ourselves: if we were examining a criminal matter, we then have to ask: 'If the facts and circumstances and the public interest present an allegation of criminal conduct … criminal acts' … we will apply those sanctions," the ASIC chair said.
Wayne Byres, the APRA chair, later told the committee by the end of this year it would have worked through all ten matters flowing from the Hayne royal commission.
Meaning; analysed and prepped for prosecution, though talk of options on criminal proceedings, Byres left listeners to guess.
Prosecutions overseen by ASIC, the hot prospects: these must involve the five most iconic firms in Australian finance.
And while any escalation on the ASIC side will ride on the facts, their view of the law and a realistic assessment of the public interest - and damn financial stability - in the post Hayne, post fees-for-no-service, post corrupt introducer, post GFC era, James Shipton has hardly begun to push the sanctions tempo.
"There has been a series of injustices," Shipton reminded the Senate, meaning all of the above and more.
"We are actively working on a number of investigations at the moment."
Shipton said these may "lead to criminal actions being taken against individuals. And corporates."