Earlier this month a committee convened to determine what if any penalty should be meted out to bankruptcy trustee Daniel Moore arrived at its verdict and, appropriately, the reasons for that determination have been made public.
Whilst the amiable Queenslander has been shackled with a number of restrictions, he hasn’t been stripped of his trustee’s registration. Nor has it been suspended.
According to AFSA, which attached the Committee’s reasons to Moore’s entry on the Trustee’s database, the penalties imposed suggest a want of ethics and professionalism. Sharing a confidential psychiatric report with an unidentified medical professional has certainly come back to bite.
Other instances cited by the committee to justify the penalties imposed include failing to demonstrate impartiality by granting informal hardship relief to an individual without showing a proper basis and also, interestingly, impugning the Inspector General in Bankruptcy in a report to creditors.
Moore, who started his 28 year career in insolvency with a four year stint at AFSA’s predecessor, the Insolvency Trustee Service Australia (ITSA), was the Committee said, expected to have a degree of experience and skill that should have prevented both the lapses identified in the AFSA show case notice of December 3, 2020 and the subsequent shortcomings in respect of tardy or unsatisfactory responses.
The committee was an all-Queensland affair, comprising AFSA’s Assistant Director National Allocations, Regulation Paul Duke, Attorney General delegate and Senior Lecturer in Business Law and Company Law at Griffith University Jennifer Dickfoss and ARITA go to Kelly-Anne Trenfield, who were required to pour over the voluminous material assembled in respect of the subject matters, which go back to 2014.
Concluding that the conduct did not warrant cancellation or even suspension the committee ordered the following:
“It is a condition on the registration of Daniel Moore from 29 July 2021 that:
- he does not consent to act as a registered trustee of any regulated debtor’s estate, unless he is to be jointly and severally appointed with another registered trustee, other than registered trustees Jason Porter and Alan Scott, for a period of 24 months.
- that he engage independent registered trustee, William Cotter, to undertake an audit of his current files and provide a report to the Inspector-General within 3 months.
- that he be supervised by independent registered trustees, Jason Porter and Alan Scott, for a period of 24 months, during which time one or both of the supervising trustees shall, either jointly or separately, as agreed upon with each other and with Daniel Moore:
- review all substantive correspondence to regulated debtors, and creditors, before being sent
- meet with Mr Moore monthly to review active matters and actions taken since the last meeting
- provide professional and/or ethical advice and assistance to Mr Moore in administering regulated debtor estates
- that he shall ensure that any fees and expenses (if any) incurred as a result of complying with condition 3. are not borne by any regulated debtor’s estate for which he is the registered trustee.
- that, of the 10 hours of Continuing Professional Education required to be completed each year of registration under sub-section 20-5(3) of the Rules, he completes 2 hours on the topics of ethics and professionalism, for a period of 24 months.”
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