Founders of Storm Financial (Storm) have been successful in their request to stop a bundle of investor responses prepared by ASIC’s investigator from being made public.
Due to the intense public interest in the case and the pending decision of a frozen payment of $2 million, persons not associated with the case can only inspect select court documents, Justic Logan said.
The exhibits, known as MRR1 and MRR2, comprised a bundle of responses by investors to a standard form questionnaire directed to them by ASIC and a summary of those responses prepared by ASIC’s investigator, Michael Ryan, court documents said.
“The limited use made of exhibits MRR1 and MRR2 to the affidavit of Mr Ryan does mean, in my opinion, that it would not be appropriate to grant leave for them to be inspected, at least in a pre-emptive way,” Logan said.
“The body of the affidavit consists of a narrative of the circumstances leading up to the making of ASIC’s winding up application. The other exhibits consist of the administrators’ report to creditors, the Information Memorandum and of correspondence between Russell & Co on behalf of Mr and Mrs Cassimatis and ASIC.”
Another reason behind not granting access to select documents in the case is that a decision over a payment of $2 million to Storm founders Emmanuel and Julie Cassimatis is yet to be finalised.
“There remains a controversy pending in the Supreme Court of Queensland in relation to the payment of $2 million made in December 2008 and that, in this Court, it was conceded that there existed a serious question to be tried in those Supreme Court proceedings,” the judge said
ASIC and Storm have been locked in a legal stoush since the corporate regulator initiated orders in the Federal Court to wind up the advisory group on March 25.
