Australia’s Capitalist Finance Sector: Deception, Exploitation and Misdirection of Financial Resources
by Trotskyist Platform / May 11th, 2021
In recent years, the ripping off of customers, deceit and even outright fraud practiced by Australian finance sector businesses has gained much attention. Four years ago it was revealed how CommInsure, the insurance arm of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), had refused to make promised life insurance payments to heart attack survivors. They “justified” this by using a definition of a heart attack that was so dodgy that even some people who had
such a severe heart attack that they had to be resuscitated were denied their entitled pay outs! Such devious practices have been undertaken by finance sector enterprises big and small – from the big four banks and insurance giants to brokers and loan enablers and to retail businesses that hand out loans. As a result the banks, insurance companies and the brokers and others connected t
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Last October, Graham Tuckwell found himself flying more than 10,000 miles out of locked-down Melbourne into soon to be re-locked-down London, the star witness for a trial in the Royal Court on the tiny island of Jersey in the English Channel.
It was the largest commercial case that Jersey had ever seen, and the local Hotel Cristina was transformed into a courtroom for four weeks to accommodate the 30-plus lawyers, barristers and 14 witnesses. The matter on trial: Tuckwell’s own intransigence.
A trio of US private equity firms that owned one-third of his exchange-traded funds business, ETF Securities – which at its peak held $US37 billion ($49 billion) in assets and had made Tuckwell very rich – had sued, arguing Tuckwell was treating the company like his own private fiefdom. At one particularly argumentative board meeting, Tuckwell became so irate at the questions being asked by directors he didn’t like that he simply put them on mute.