Light Reading Material, page-9

Hi Whalewatcher,

The extract of the ASIC letter you provided CDU Thread watchers to peruse was in a report prepared by the person who did the "CuDeco Shareholder Research" document. This was a reference to assist the Senate Inquiry into ASIC Committee in their investigatins into CuDeco Limited and other companies on the ASX.

In a later part of his submission the "CuDeco Shareholder Research" document writer had this to say about ASIC:

"The overwhelming response to the enquiry is clearly revealing that the large players in the financial system, including the regulator through not effectively discharging its duties , are complicit in allowing Australian citizens to be systematically parted from their assets and savings with little recourse to justice.

Highly dubious dealings have flourished in:

* the share market where trading is neither fair or transparent and nor does it function with integrity at all times, where the portfolios of retail investors and investors involved in management funds, as well as emerging companies, are all unfairly targeted by unscrupulous trading practices.

* the banking industry where borowes have been on the receiving end of cleverly crafted bank lending rorts, and

* the consumer finance/investing sector where where people have been on the receiving end of investment scams.

As has been pointed out earlier, the buck really does stop with ASIC and it is up to the Senate Enquiry to take the first steps to initiate an overhaul of all facets of ASIC's operations to ensure that it effectively delivers all of that which is expected of it. The expectations are at least spelt out in ASIC's guiding statements and in Treasury briefs which make the current situation so untenable, as the job clearly isn't getting done as well as it should be. Australia cannot continue to tolerate a situation where the financial markets are substantially compromised and regulation is widely recognized as being ineffective."

This weel in Parliament efforts are being made by Parliamentarians to have the Govenment establish a Royal Commission on this subject.

cheers,

Max