PURE GREED: A PAUL BARRY INVESTIGATION
Sunday, July 22 from 9am-11am

They thought it would help them live a happy, prosperous retirement. They believed the advertisements which spruiked healthy returns in Australia’s booming property market. But those ordinary Australians were duped. Taken in by greedy companies who preyed on the elderly and the vulnerable, while Australia’s corporate authorities looked on.

An estimated 40,000 “Mum and Dad” investors stand to lose more than $1 billion of their lifesavings following the collapse of Westpoint, ACR, Fincorp and Bridgepoint.

In a special investigation for SUNDAY, investigative journalist and author Paul Barry looks at the collapse of these companies, the people affected and the failure of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to stop it.

Investors in ACR and Fincorp were encouraged to believe their money was in mortgages, backed by bricks and mortar. In fact it was being lent to on risky construction projects – most of which hadn’t started. The advertising campaigns were run in daytime television, and on radio featuring media personality Alan Jones – blatantly directed at retirees looking for an income.

And ASIC had many opportunities to stop these companies from continuing to plunder money from these investors – having investigated Fincorp and its operations several times. In 2005, ASIC took the company to the NSW Supreme Court which ruled that the company’s prospectus was misleading and ordered it to return $75 million to investors. But ASIC never insured the court order was carried out.

Investor John Dammon lost his life savings with Fincorp – he shouldn’t have.

“I think ASIC have behaved very, very poorly … they had the knowledge Fincorp had issued false prospectuses on six occasions and they did nothing about it. They just sat there and watched. And they could have stepped in and saved thousands of investors a lot of money,” he says.

Paul Barry is available for interviews.