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Posted: 2024-07-05 04:23:49

Bernie Madoff died in a North Carolina medical centre attached to Butner, a US federal prison known for housing inmates with chronic health conditions, just three years ago.

Once a titan of Wall Street, the 82-year-old was just 12 years into a 150-year sentence for running the world's biggest Ponzi scheme, worth a reputed $US65 billion.

Previously considered untouchable, the former chair of the Nasdaq Stock Exchange was unceremoniously led from his office in handcuffs on December 11, 2008 and paraded before the public in what US politicians refer to as the "perp walk" by FBI and US Securities and Exchange Commission officers.

By June the following year, Madoff was behind bars.

If he ever had misgivings about his downfall, perhaps his greatest regret should have been that he didn't base himself in Australia.

The pool of money may well be a mere pond compared to the US. But the chance of detection or prosecution was far lower, overseen by a regulator with a reputation for cosying up to big business and shying away from prosecution.

This week, a parliamentary inquiry recommended a radical overhaul of our corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), in yet another call to bring it into line with its global peers.

The first recommendation was a demand for the federal government to recognise the organisation's inadequacies.

A regulator missing in action

ASIC's failures have been well documented over the past 25 years, most recently by former High Court justice Kenneth Hayne in his royal commission into banking misconduct.

Each day for months, lurid tales of theft and deceit were broadcast to the world as the leaders of some of our biggest financial institutions were forced to confess their sins.

Kenneth Hayne at Banking Royal Commission

Kenneth Hayne found much of the misconduct committed by financial institutions had already come to the attention of the corporate regulator.(AAP: David Geraghty)

But it wasn't as though ASIC had been caught unaware.

Take AMP as a case study. In 2006, the life insurer became embroiled in what then was hailed as the scandal of the decade.

It was caught overcharging thousands of customers, switching them into expensive and poorly-performing products designed to enrich planners and the organisation, at the expense of clients.

Despite what would usually be referred to as theft outside the financial world, no-one faced charges and the organisation was never even subjected to a civil damages case.

Instead, it was forced to sign "enforceable undertakings" where it merely promised to never repeat its misdeeds.

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