Investigations conducted by PKF duo Jason Stone and Glenn Franklin into failed ponzi shaman Chris Marco and his company AMS Holdings (WA) Pty Ltd (AMS) appear to have Westpac spooked.
Why else would the big four member signal, as it did in the NSW Supreme Court this week, that it was seeking to have struck out the AMS‘ liquidators’ statement of claim, a claim based on revelations of extraordinary laxity in the bank’s private wealth division which allowed Marco to transfer tens of millions of allegedly ill-gotten dollars to tax havens offshore?
Unless the idea is to bleed the liquidators of funds, a strike out application is likely only to benefit them, providing insights their legal advisors at HFW can use to reformulate and amend the claim in a way that potentially makes it harder for Westpac to defend.
Maybe given some of the revelations recently extracted from Westpac staff via public examinations, the bank’s litigation committee has self-combusted?
This is after all the same authorised deposit taking institution that lost half a billion to a Victorian shyster, name of Nicholas Pappas, who was smart enough to flee the jurisdiction before the bank’s then fetal-stage suspicions birthed a monstrous fraud.
Under questioning earlier this month one of Marco’s private bankers at Westpac was asked about the statement of taxable income for 30 June 2014 that Marco had provided to the bank in the sum of $198,316, and the more than $27 million he had sitting in a Westpac Esaver account.
You’ll be astonished to read that Corinne McNamee, a former senior associate private banker with Westpac’s Private Wealth division had limited recall, though she did sometimes know when to suggest that her boss at the time, Nick Plaisted might know the answer.
She also told the liquidator’s counsel Mark Hoffmann KC that prior to leaving Westpac she had shredded her client diary, which contained details and notes of meeting with her clients, including Marco.
Further, she hadn’t a clue that Jersey in the Channel Islands was a known tax haven when in 2016 Marco asked her to effect an overseas telegraphic transfer of $14 million to his HSBC Expat Account in Saint Helier, Jersey.
Nor could she recall whether or not she knew at that time that Mauritius, where Marco was supposedly looking to establish a hedge fund, was also a foreign tax haven jurisdiction with banking secrecy provisions.
She told the court she learned about their tax haven status “as her career progressed”.
The examinations are continuing and the trend of testimony is doing Westpac no favours so a strike out might be seen as a way of rebalancing the litigation in its favour if it wrong foots the PKF pair.
Marco meanwhile is facing trial on multiple criminal counts of fraud later this year. He’s pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Further reading:
Bankers to be grilled in secret over tax haven transfers
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