THE PSYCHOLOGIST

Federal Court slams criminal case against ANZ bank as a 'complete shemozzle'

ANZ now off the hook after the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions spent 3 years running around in circles. They could not specify exactly what the ANZ did wrong.

Government regulators tend to be lax about case preparation as they think nobody will have the funds or courage to take on the government. They think people will fold immediately. There have been some atrocious cases of that in Britain, notably the prosecution of Vincent Tchenguiz by the Serious Fraud Office. Their bureaucratic arrogance cost the SFO many millions

But the ANZ is a big beast so was not afraid to take on the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions

Prosecutors have abandoned a long-running criminal cartel case against ANZ and one of its senior executives, Rick Moscati, after the Federal Court described the matter as a "complete shemozzle".

The court also said the committal hearings — where a magistrate decides whether there is sufficient evidence to take the matter to trial — were "long, drawn out and ultimately ... fairly pointless".

In an embarrassing blow, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) was ordered to refile its indictment, for a third time, because it was "deficient and defective".

Despite the setback, the CDPP has decided to proceed with its criminal prosecution against banking giants Deutsche Bank and Citigroup, which are also defendants in this matter.

Criminal test case

In June 2018, ANZ, Deutsche and Citi were prosecuted for being "knowingly concerned in alleged cartel conduct".

It is essentially a form of alleged collusion — and the matter was the result of a two-year investigation by the competition watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

This case arose from ANZ's decision to raise extra cash from institutional investors, by issuing $2.5 billion worth of new shares in August 2015.

Citi, Deutsche and a third major global bank, JP Morgan, through some of their most senior executives, allegedly came to an understanding on what to do with any shares that were unable to be sold.

Often, there aren't any left over — but this time almost a third of the shares, worth about $790 million, did not sell.

JP Morgan is not facing charges because it blew the whistle and was granted immunity.

This is seen as an important test case because criminal cartel charges had never been brought against an Australian bank before.

For companies, the maximum fine for each offence is either $10 million, or three times the total benefits that have been earned and are "reasonably attributable" to the commission of the offence (whichever is greater).

For individuals, the maximum sentence is 10 years in prison, a fine of up to $420,000, or both.

'Complete shemozzle'

Justice Michael Wigney did not mince words when he criticised the prosecutor's handling of the case on Wednesday morning.

"It would not be unfair to characterise the situation concerning the state of the indictment as a complete shemozzle," he said.

The judge also said it was "entirely unsatisfactory" that the indictment had not been finalised — three years after the banks and their executives were first charged, and about six months before the trial was due to commence.

The CDPP filed its first indictment (which outlines the criminal charges) against the banks and its executives on February 1.

But it was ordered to file a new indictment by July 7 because the charges were poorly explained and "defective" — partly because of the "complex nature" of Australia's cartel legislation.

The same thing happened again on Wednesday's hearing (November 3). In a brief summary of the judge's decision, the Federal Court noted:

"The accused argued that the charges did not sufficiently describe the nature of the offences that they were alleged to have committed because, for the most part, the charges were entirely bereft of particulars and simply repeated the words of the relevant offence provisions."

Justice Wigney decided to give the prosecutor a third chance — and a November 24 deadline to file yet another set of indictments.

Instead of trying again, the CDPP decided to abandon its case against ANZ and Mr Moscati, but is pressing ahead with its prosecution of Deutche and Citi.

In a statement, ANZ's chief risk officer Kevin Corbally said: “We maintained all along ANZ acted in accordance with the law in relation to the placement.

"We defended the bank and Rick on that basis and we are pleased the matter is now behind us."

https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/markets/federal-court-slams-criminal-case-against-anz-as-a-complete-shemozzle/ar-AAQfIzE?ocid=chromentpnews

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Background

The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.

The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Global warming

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Two examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:

The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here

Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?

Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.

A good article on Leftist hate

The real history of social Darwinism

Some personal memoirs

Memoir highlights

THE PSYCHOLOGIST

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