Australian regulator ASIC has banned Mark Alexander Landau of Balmain, New South Wales (formerly of Toorak Gardens, South Australia) and Marcus Roderick Campbell of South Brighton, South Australia from providing financial services for 10 years.
The decisions were made by ASIC’s new Financial Services and Credit Panel, which found that Mr Landau and Mr Campbell had engaged in conduct that was deliberate and dishonest and involved continued, knowing and wilful contraventions of the law.
Mr Landau was employed as an authorised representative and Senior Wealth Adviser in the Adelaide office of Macquarie Equities Limited (Macquarie) between November 2007 and June 2017.
Mr Campbell was employed as an authorised representative and Executive Investment Adviser in the Adelaide office of Macquarie between November 2007 and June 2017.
The Panel found that between January 2014 and January 2017 Mr Landau, and between August 2015 and March 2017 Mr Campbell:
- falsified the content of client email exchanges to mislead or deceive Macquarie’s compliance team into believing that general advice or execution only instructions had been given by them, and not personal advice;
- arranged for the false emails to be saved into Macquarie’s customer relationship management system, Xplan; and
- created false order management system (IOS) transaction records to reflect the emails.
On 14 August 2018, Mr Landau and Mr Campbell filed applications in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) for a review of the banning orders made by the Panel. Mr Landau and Mr Campbell also applied for a stay of the banning orders pending the determination of the review applications in the AAT.
On 10 September 2018, the applications for a stay of the banning orders were subsequently dismissed by the AAT. The hearing for the substantive appeals has been listed to commence on 26 November 2018.
The official announcement can be seen here.