Reforming the Australian Securities and Investments Commission
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Corporate and financial white-collar crime is a major problem across Australia costing Australians billions of dollars and causing major personal life crushing financial and emotional distress.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is Australia’s corporate and financial law enforcement body and has a horrendous record of pursuing white collar crime.
In October 2022, John Adams published two independent reports showing alarming trends at ASIC over the past 11 years. Specifically, Adams showed that ASIC is conducting fewer only official investigations in response of reports of alleged misconduct and that the rate of no further action (NFA) has skyrocketed.
ASIC’s performance and public reputation are so dire that the Adams report called on the Federal Parliament to hold a public inquiry into ASIC.
On 27 October 2022, the Australian Senate voted 43 – 20 to establish an inquiry into ASIC through the Senate Economics References Committee.
During the course of the 20-month inquiry, Adams:
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made over 10 submissions in his personal capacity;
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worked with relevant stakeholders to organise their own submissions and to become witnesses; and
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broke several exclusive and significant ASIC related stories through his YouTube channel, In the Interests of the People.
On 3 July 2024, a landmark inquiry report was handed down by Senator Andrew Bragg in which he:
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exposed ASIC for failing to effectively police corporate Australia and Australia’s financial system resulting in Australia being a safe haven for white collar crime;
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exposed ASIC for being untruthful to the Parliament of Australia;
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pointed to ASIC’s staff survey results to call out the organisation as ‘sick’; and
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recommended for ASIC to be abolished and be replaced by two new Commonwealth regulators – one focused on companies and the other focused on financial services in line with other comparable jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Self-Funded Investigation which exposed ABC Bullion
In March and April 2021, John Adams was told by two independent sources of serious misconduct occurring at major Australian bullion dealer, ABC Bullion.
The alleged misconduct was so scandalous that Adams was left initially in a state of absolute shock. However, Adams could sit still. With no legal or law enforcement experience, Adams embarked on multiple self-funded investigation into the alleged misconduct.
The first Adams investigation (taking 10-months) took place from June 2021 to April 2022 costing approximately $AUD 50,000. The second Adams investigation (taking 6-months) occurred from May 2023 to November 2023 costing approximately $AUD 12,000.
Although, the chances of securing an official ASIC investigation pursuant to section 13 of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001 by a member of the public is only 0.3%, Adams was able to secure two official investigations into ABC Bullion by ASIC with them being:
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Investigation 1 (into possible contraventions of Chapter 2 of the Corporations Act 2001) – July 2022 to August 2023; and
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Investigation 2 (into possible contraventions of Chapter 7 of the Corporations Act 2001) – December 2023 to August 2024.
On both occasions, ASIC concluded their investigations by stating that they would take no action against ABC Bullion citing a lack of evidence.
However, sensing that something was wrong with ASIC’s first investigation, Adams spent 8 months from September 2023 through to May 2024 conducting a critical review of ASIC’s first investigation and producing a 200+ page report.
The major findings of the Critical Review report were reported on by Michael West Media in a three-part series from August 2024 to October 2024.
The findings of the Critical Review report were provided to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) as a formal referral. The referral remains live after 70 weeks.
Exposing Unallocated and Pool Allocated Problems at the Perth Mint
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In February 2021, John Adams was tipped off by various Perth Mint customers that the Mint was struggling to deliver physical silver products – especially for its unallocated and pool-allocated clients.
On 20 March 2021, Adams went public and called out the Perth Mint for defaulting on its contractual obligations.
Within 2 weeks, this single tweet attracted 365,000 impressions world-wide and caused a firestorm in the global precious metals community.
Numerous Perth Mint customer horror stories were exposed which were completely inconsistent with the public assurances of the Perth Mint.
This firestorm led to a global social media discussion about the true nature of unallocated and pool allocated products and the risks they carry.
Adams was able to assist many investors dump their synthetic silver positions and get their hands on actual physical silver!
Defeating the $AUD 10,000 Cash Transaction Ban
One Sunday morning in July 2019, John Adams received a tip-off that the Commonwealth Treasury had dropped late on the previous afternoon a consultation paper and process into criminalising cash transactions above $AUD 10,000 via the Currency (Restrictions on the Use of Cash) Bill 2019.
Within hours, Adams had teamed up with Martin North and Robbie Barwick to unleash a grassroots led social media campaign against the proposed ban. This included rallying thousands of Australians to make submissions during the Treasury consultation and the Federal Parliament Senate inquiry.
During the Senate inquiry, Adams was the only social media/YouTube commentator who was called (in January 2020) to provide public expert testimony.
In December 2020, at the urging of Adams and others, Senator Malcolm Roberts successfully moved a motion removing the legislation from the Senate notice paper and thus killing the legislation.
The freedom to use physical cash in Australia unrestricted had been saved.
Fighting Against Bank Deposit Bail-in
In 2018, John Adams and Martin North teamed up to broadcast a 5 part series on YouTube about bank bail-ins – what they are and the risk of them occurring in Australia, especially in light of legislation which had passed the Federal Parliament.
This 5 part series was followed-up with a number of programs to show that bank bail-ins of retail bank deposits was not foreign to Australia, rather this practice had been implemented during the banking collapse and economic depression of 1892-93.
The bank bail-in campaign (which coincided with other groups such as the Citizen Party) led Senator Malcolm Roberts to introduce the Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill 2020 in February 2020 which proposed to make a small amendment the Banking Act 1959. This legislation sought to provide absolute clarity that bank bail-ins on retail deposits could not occur in Australia. The proposed legislation triggered a senate inquiry in mid 2020.
As part of this inquiry, Adams wrote the lead 32-page submission which included the legal analysis of experienced commercial solicitor Bob Butler.
Unfortunately, even though the proposed amendment was extremely minor, the Australian Senate voted down Senator Roberts’ proposed legislation.
Fighting for transparency over the RBA’s Gold Holdings
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In 2018, John Adams began a series of videos with Martin North questioning the location and safety of the Australian Government’s gold holdings via the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). This included asking questions about:
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the location of Australia’s physical gold that had been “leased” by the RBA; and
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the quality and independence of official RBA gold audits.
At the time that Adams was asking questions, neither the RBA nor any other government institution had published any public information about Australia’s official gold holdings.
The Adams and North videos triggered a wave of public pressure on the RBA from ordinary members of the Australian public.
As result, the RBA created a new public webpage which, for the first time, detailed information about its official gold holdings, including its gold leasing activities.