Media Release

7 July 2015: KAP Federal Leader and Member for Kennedy Bob Katter MP is fuming at the regulatory watchdog - the Australian Securities Investment Commission’s (ASIC), toothless inaction in regards to the receivers of Kagara.

Mr Katter’s office has again been contacted by a potential buyer of the Kagara/Mungana assets. The potential buyer has made a complaint about the receivers/administrators, FTI Consulting, not giving due consideration to offers made and the receivers/administrators not consulting creditors about the offers on the table.

This is 4th complaint from different companies about the receiver brought to Mr Katter’s attention. Mr Katter has referred the matter to ASIC, but based on past experience is not holding his breath for action.

“Once again the appalling irrelevance and useless wasteful nature of ASIC is unbelievable. It is not only this case, there are 100s of cases.

Kagara Mine in Northern QLD, went into voluntary administration in April 2012 owing an estimated $100 million to North Queensland employees, contractors and businesses. The impact on local contractors and workers has been wide-spread and devastating.

“Three years ago this happened, a bank kicked the ground out from under them, a minority shareholder has taken the assets shorn of the debt.

“We remind ASIC and FTI Consulting of the poor little people that work in cafes that lost $10,000 in shares, to the creditors some of whom are small operators and lost 6-7 figure sums - many of them now bankrupt, to the wage earners who in two cases I know of went hungry. And ASIC – still nothing.

It came to light in previous media reports that ASIC, at the request of an FTI Consulting receiver who wrote an email to the regulator ASIC addressed ‘Dear-Team’ , gave an exemption from providing audited reports and other information to creditors.

“ASIC has done nothing and one of the receivers is an ex-member of ASIC and was stupid enough to write ‘Dear-Team’ when he was requesting that ASIC stay off his back.

Mr Katter and the State Member for Dalrymple, Shane Knuth have been unrelenting in their pursuit of this issue. Mr Katter has had meetings with the current and former Treasurer, has written to ASIC numerous times, met in person with the head of ASIC, met with the head of FTI Consulting and has submitted Questions with Notice in the Federal Parliament.

“ASIC has been a toothless tiger; more accurately a government big corporate pussy cat,”

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