Sonray Capital Markets chief executive Scott Kenneth Murray has pleaded guilty in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court after his arrest on 10 criminal charges following an ASIC investigation.
Murray pleaded guilty to six counts of false accounting involving fictitious deposits of $36,439,588 and US$9,779,395.25, and false withdrawals totalling $7,800,923.
He also pleaded guilty to two counts of theft totalling $2,256,500, one count of obtaining a financial advantage by deception, and one count of misleading an auditor concerning a capital injection of $5,200,000.
Murray faces a maximum of 10 years’ imprisonment on each of the false accounting, theft and deception charges, and the offence of misleading an auditor carries a maximum term of five years’ imprisonment, the corporate watchdog said.
He was remanded on conditional bail to appear in the Supreme Court of Victoria for a directions hearing on 7 March.
His conditions of bail are that he surrenders his passport, does not leave Australia and does not attend any international point of departure in Australia, and that he resides at his residential address.
Sonray was established in 2003 and held an Australian financial services licence.
It was one of the first brokers in Australia that provided advice on contracts for difference (CFD). It dealt in equities, options, futures, CFDs, margin foreign exchange and exchange-traded funds, and had offices in Melbourne, on the Gold Coast and in Rockhampton.
On 22 June 2010, Sonray was placed in voluntary administration and on 27 October 2010 it was placed into liquidation.
According to the administrator, Ferrier Hodgson, which was appointed to Sonray, the broker as at 22 June 2010 had gross client positions of $76.85 million, gross client holdings in either cash/equities held by counterparties of $30.15 million, a shortfall of $46.7 million, about 3500 clients and 54 employees.
ASIC said its investigation into the collapse of Sonray was continuing.
