IMO all these style cases would be against their directors...

IMO all these style cases would be against their directors indemnity insurer ( as they definitely have $) assuming they have it and are covered by their actions. Most Dir and officers of companies have their finances structured to avoid possible claim on main assets with it in wives , trust structures , within super etc. Even If you have exact info on specific incidence that will guarantee a conviction it would still probably be better to have the big stick prosecute your case due to resources required assuming they do their job.

Multiple cases would end up being combined is my understanding and heard together when it comes to the crunch and should there be more than 30? litigants it can then fall to a class action ?

Some here who have actively recently participated in class actions or are currently involved in one would be much better informed on all this.

New directors , auditors have a obligation to look into and report to authorities certain activities they stumble across or is brought to their attention ( most never look back and want to move forward) and also make decisions as to whether to try and recover from parties or insurer. Activist directors who come in fresh , restate accounts, review agreements and changes to them and decide need / odd of recover capital are a good thing but rare. It takes 5 years to get a case up and recover if anything is recoverable and not many shareholders would support them and the drain on cash flow as with everything legal there is no definite answer and may be creating a claim against their current insurer for previous directors actions. . .These directors have a issue that they may be opening up a claim by their own shareholders on their own company - you can see the conundrum unless there is gold bars lying around to fund those years and definite payout it creates zero value.

The best solution is always for a govt authority to take on the case and get a result. They prove that there was misdoings and flesh out what went on. That takes bulk of all the discovery and costs and puts them in the open allowing those actually affected to then go hard against insurers / auditors and directors with precedent rulings already in place. Rarely does the govt authority do it on behalf of shareholders and actually get them compensated and 99% of the time if they make any effort they do some soft option like a undertaking , tick it off their list, give themselves a gold star either stay silent or put out a glowing media statement or a bit of lame publicity and move on. About as effective as a wet fish IMO unless there is a great deal of public and political pressure and independent media keeping a light on it or some form of insider trading . Ie Bond, Skase, Rivkin, Vizard etc

Undoubtedly IMO if someone has enough time and went through all trading data and registry transactions in a lot of ASX companies you would work out distant related parties ( outside limited reportable ones) , staff, family , super accounts etc who seem to be very " lucky" with trading in some stocks . ASIC theoretically has the ability and with new things like individual director numbers and identification of all broker accounts it will in the future be able to process this data but it misses the cousins son's uncle or the mate at the club style links unless it is a consistent pattern and also will miss derivative trading or offshore dual listed trading offenses. It won't catch dodgy activity of the actual company but dodgy s often greedy so wants some extra cream and will trade as well inevitably it will indicate who possibly had information and used it as that is where the easy "clean " money is often made not the actual activity in the company but trading it.. Remember 90% of winners are made by dodging losses not by picking the best winners so knowing / dodging a downturn in share price picking a absolute bottom and / or knowing it has a floor price and/ or perceived positive news coming are money for jam and allows the all in transaction - on / off style trades ..

No idea if any of this has happened in these companies but with few penalties enforced and seemingly weak regulation there isn't a high barrier IMO for people who wanted their cream on top. if that was their personality.