Greens Treasury spokesperson, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, welcomes the tabling of the report of an Inquiry into criminal, civil and administrative penalties for white-collar crime by the Senate Economic Committee.
Senator Whish-Wilson said, “In 2014, the ground-breaking Senate Inquiry into ASIC recommended that the Government conduct a review of white-collar crime penalties, but unfortunately the Government ignored this. So in November 2015 I successfully lodged a motion in the Senate to establish this Inquiry into penalities.
“The Senate Inquiry heard from regulators such as ASIC and the ACCC; the Law Council; the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions; and a number of eminent criminologists.
“The Greens fully endorse the recommendation of the Senate Economics committee to increase civil penalties for individuals and corporations and to give ASIC disgorgement powers so that they can better claw-back any ill-gotten gains.
“The Greens have provided additional comments including calling on the Government to standardise the criminal penalties available to regulators and courts so that the maximum custodial sentence is raised to a maximum of 10 years for all white-collar crimes. We also strongly endorse the need for financial penalties to be made at three times the amount gained from the wrongdoing.
“We are also calling on the Government to establish a ‘name and shame’ register for white-collar criminals that expands on ASIC’s current “banned and disqualified” list by including the names of people and businesses subjected to successful civil or criminal proceedings.
“White-collar crime is seldom an act of impulse or necessity. It is most often well-planned, systemic, and fuelled by greed. The penalties we have right now don’t take this this into account. We need to put the fear of God into people and businesses that are considering market manipulation, insider trading or fraud. And the current approach to penalties doesn’t do that.
Greens Treasury spokesperson, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson
