ASIC permanently bans Skynet FS adviser
The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) has permanently banned Skynet Financial Services Pty Ltd director, Terence Rio Nugara, from providing financial services for misleading his clients into believing they were investing in property developments across Melbourne, when in fact the purported developments did not exist.
ASIC also found that found that Nugara falsely represented to investors that investing in these property developments would generate them significant returns.
According to the regulator, he obtained a total of $1.6 million from his clients by advising them to withdraw money from their existing superannuation funds and deposit it into self-managed super funds that he set up.
Following this, Nugara used these funds for his own purposes, including to pay off his own personal debts.
ASIC said that Nugara’s conduct was “deliberate, repeated and extended over several years”.
Melbourne-based Nugara was the sole director of Skynet Financial Services from 2009 to 2019. Between 2013 and 2017, Nugara and Skynet Financial Services were authorised and corporate authorised representatives of Financial Services Partners.
As a result of the ban, Nugara is permanently prevented from providing any financial service, controlling an entity that carries on a financial services business and performing any function involved in carrying on a financial services business.
He did not respond to ASIC’s concerns and he has the right to appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAP) for a review of ASIC’s decision.
Nugara is also currently in custody after being arrested by Victoria Police in October 2022 and charged with 35 counts of obtaining financial advantage by deception.
Unless he’s running a financial planning service dealing in cigarettes I doubt he’s doing much while incarcerated (in the financial planning space). Probably has not even passed his FASEA exam! 😉