Former Big Un chief escapes prison time for insider trading

The former chief executive of Big Un Richard Evans has learned his fate after the District Court of New South Wales handed down its verdict, with Evans escaping imprisonment.

Evans, also known as Richard Evertz, was sentenced to one-year-and-nine-months imprisonment, to be served by way of an intensive correction order (ICO), with 400 hours of community service.

Evans was the former chief executive of the collapsed ASX-listed technology firm and was convicted for communicating inside information to another person after he pleaded guilty to the charge on April 10.

Evans admitted to sharing sensitive inside information about a funding arrangement and customer onboarding with a shareholder in January 2017.

The inside information concerned the number of customers who had been onboarded to purchase Big Un's promotional 'TV Show' package at a cost of $12,000, together with a $20 million funding arrangement with 'Finstro', a product of Sydney-based First Class Capital, which allowed customers to make the purchase on deferred payment terms, ASIC said.

Evans first appeared via his lawyer in the Downing Centre Local Court on 14 February 2023 when he was initially charged, and as a consequence of his conviction, he is automatically disqualified from managing corporations for five years.

Big Un was delisted from the ASX in 2018 and is now in liquidation.

The matter was prosecuted by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) following a referral from ASIC.

ASIC previously took action against four additional people associated with Big Un, including its former chief financial officer Andrew Corner, who was charged with insider trading but the charges were discontinued by the CDPP earlier this year.

Michael Ming Jinn Ho, a former investment analyst of Maple Brown Abbott, was sentenced after he was convicted on five counts of insider trading and one count of communicating inside information about Big Un between 2016 and 2018.

Auditors for Big Un Graham Rothesay Swan and Jakin Leong Loke were also disciplined and suspended for failing to conduct audits of Big Un in compliance with auditing standards.

Communicating inside information is an offence under section 1043A(2) of the Corporations Act 2001 and carries the maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment and/or a fine of 4500 penalty units at the time of the offending.

Additionally, if the court could determine the total value of the benefits that had been obtained by one or more persons and were reasonably attributable to the commission of the offence, the penalty would be three times that total value.

The maximum penalty increased in March 2019 to 15 years imprisonment.