revival duke group in liquidation

A lesson on the morality and ethics of regulators can be gleaned from the current court case in South Australia over the defunct (but likely to be revived) Duke Group (Merchant bank of the 80's).

It appears from the facts, the liquidators had their hands in the till, the banks (Hambros) were in it up to their necks and the end result was an impatient and avaracious group of liquidators wanting to grab that statutory dolar they grab at shareholder expense.

The Duke group was a mid level merchant bank that took a blow from the market meltdown in 1989 but still was liquid. Liquidators were called in by nervous banks trying to clamour for the scarce cash in the market place they helped create through their greed.

A subsidiary of Duke, Hartogen Energy with its millions of dollars was also liquidated inspite of the non arms length transaction by directors who empties the company's coffers then brought in a liquidator who knew well the company was solvent but wanted to drag on the proceedings and to then charge these costs to their benefit.

We have regulators who sleep with the enemy and who steal