Banned financial adviser pleads guilty to fabricating evidence

Failing to openly and honestly cooperate with ASIC investigations can have dire consequences, as banned former financial adviser, Mr Ezzat-Daniel Nesseim, has found.

Mr Nesseim has pleaded guilty to five criminal offences, which carry penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment.  

The charges relate to the fabrication of evidence and giving false evidence to ASIC.  Mr Nesseim, who formerly ran Smart Financial Strategies providing financial services to retail clients, has admitted to providing fabricated evidence to ASIC in the form of three backdated wholesale client certificates.  

The wholesale client certificates were required to be in place before providing financial services to clients, in order to treat them as “wholesale” and so “retail” regulatory protections did not apply.  Mr Nesseim fabricated them in an attempt to dissuade ASIC from further enquiries.

Mr Nesseim then gave false answers and information to ASIC, both orally under oath and in writing response to statutory notices, after queries about the certificates.  

This misconduct was compounded when Mr Nesseim relied on other fabricated evidence, including doctored emails and purported witness statements from other individuals, and gave false testimony in an ASIC delegate hearing.

This case demonstrates once again that ASIC requires full cooperation with its inquiries, and there is zero tolerance for providing false or misleading information.

Moreover, it demonstrates that the penalties for providing false evidence can be much worse than the impact of the facts that the false evidence is designed to hide.

Mr Nesseim has been granted conditional bail and is awaiting sentencing.  The charges were brought by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) following an ASIC investigation.

Mackay Chapman’s regulatory experts advise companies and individuals on their risks, rights and obligations in ASIC investigations, statutory notices and compulsory examinations on oath.  

ASIC’s media release on the guilty plea can be found here: https://asic.gov.au/about-asic/news-centre/find-a-media-release/2021-releases/21-308mr-former-nsw-financial-adviser-pleads-guilty-to-dishonest-conduct-and-using-fabricated-evidence/