The Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s re-run of its ‘mistaken’ case against Mayfair 101 Managing Director James Mawhinney, has been set down for a two-week trial commencing 21 October 2024, the Federal Court ordered today.
Justice O’Callaghan set a date for the re-hearing of ASIC’s overturned case after he had earlier rejected the corporate regulators attempts to introduce new claims against Mr Mawhinney in the remitted case.
The original ASIC-initiated proceeding VID 524/2020 was commenced on an ex parte basis in August 2020 resulting in a 20-year ban of Mr Mawhinney dealing in financial products, however the decision was overturned on appeal by unanimous decision of three judges in the Full Court in October 2022, who also ordered the case be remitted to a new Federal Court judge. In doing so the Full Court found Mr Mawhinney had been denied procedural fairness, describing ASIC’s case as “mistaken” and “absurd” and allowing Mr Mawhinney’s appeal to succeed.
ASIC subsequently issued an amended originating process at the commencement of the remitted case attempting to introduce fresh claims, however ASIC’s attempt to change its original case was subsequently disallowed in October by Justice O’Callaghan who found that the remitted case related only to the question of whether a ban from dealing in financial products should be imposed.
570 Australian lenders have been without principal and interest payments on $211 million worth of debt instruments they had subscribed to prior to ASIC targeting the group in early 2020. At the time, Mayfair 101 held a diversified portfolio of over half a billion dollars’ worth of private equity assets including over one hundred and thirty investment properties in Australia.
Mr Mawhinney said he was relieved that a trial date had been set for the remitted proceeding. By the time the trial runs in 2024 he will have been disallowed from dealing in financial products for more than four years in circumstances where it is yet to be determined if any ban should have been imposed at all.
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