"Opes allowed clients to short sell (as do many of the bigger traditional margin lenders). So why should they not also foster short selling by external parties through the 'stock lending' system"
Whether the short selling was done by their own clients (clearly the owners of the stock wouldn't be short selling them, it would be other clients ie Opes essentially created a situation where their clients were was faking each other ..... & Opes received payment for facilitating the orgy), or the short selling was done by an unrelated 3rd party, the fact remains that Opes created a scheme whereby their actions (lending shares to short sellers) ensured their investors (the margin borrowers) were assured of their assets being devalued (even if only in the short term)
Clearly, with the benefit of hindsight, no-one would use such a scheme. So it would be reasonable to assume that those caught up in this didn't realise that that is what Opes was doing.
Whether they should have known (ie higher level of due dilligence) is an individual opinion/assessment (understandably dependent on whether an investor or not).
The indisputable point (I think) is that ASX & ACCC has clearly failed to identify a "business model" what was always going to end up being a disaster for the investors.
