Corporate, governance issues fuel whistleblower tipoffs: ASIC

The corporate regulator received nearly 2000 tip offs from whistleblowers in the last financial year, a whopping 183% jump annually, the majority of which relate to corporate and governance issues.

ASIC highlights in its newly published annual report that the lion's share of tip offs related to corporations and corporate governance issues (74%).

This included organisations failing to pay employee entitlements, insolvent trading and internal company disputes.

Whistleblowers also relayed matters relating to credit and financial services, and the conduct of licensees (13%), markets (3%) and other issues (10%).

ASIC said it is unable to comment on its assessments of, or investigations into, whistleblower disclosures, due to the strong confidentiality protections.

"Following our preliminary inquiries, we assessed approximately 94% of disclosures as requiring no further action by ASIC due to insufficient evidence, no actionable breach being disclosed, or the breach being in the jurisdiction or remit of other regulators," the regulator said.

ASIC surveyed 134 companies in 18 industries about their whistleblower programs during the period.

In a prior whistleblower survey, ASIC found that one third (36%) of organisations do not have a dedicated whistleblower web page for raising concerns, and 20% did not provide a dedicated whistleblower hotline.

Treasury is currently reviewing corporate whistleblowing laws, seeking to address the issues and gaps under the Corporations Act and the Tax Administration Act.

It will also examine whistleblowers' access to justice, the administration and regulation of the regimes and their effectiveness in incentivising whistleblowing disclosures and disincentivising tax and corporate misconduct.

The review was sparked by the KPMG Australia saga, which exposed the mishandling of a whistleblower.

Elsewhere in ASIC's annual report, only $421 million have been repaid to victims of the Shield and First Guardian collapses out of a total of $1.1 billion. Only Macquarie and Netwealth have made their clients whole following court enforceable undertakings agreed with ASIC.

ASIC is seeking compensation for the clients of Equity Trustees Superannuation and Diversa Trustees, which remain before the Federal Court.

ASIC raked in $830 million in civil penalties in the last financial year involving actions against 65 defendants.