If there is a case the lawyers will be sueing him personally soon enough.
If there is no case, well, heck. Life isn't fair. Just make sure the rules are stacked in your favour next time.
...and when you get up that high....that's all there is. Contracts and legislation.
Moral obligations, social consciences and communal niceities are the play things and domain of those amateurs who dabble in their own small world's. They have absolutely no place where these cats play.
When it gets BIG and serious, they survive and thrive in the thin air where corporate solicitors circle and "advise"....There's no battlers up there, no-one's grandmother with her last $ 3,000 nest egg, no wharfies having a fling with some money left over from giving up smoking.
They ask beforehand where the line is, and then tread that line right on the edge to squeeze everything to the max. Everything is agreed and signed off prior to any action. Nothing is a surprise. Their personal exit clauses are agreed and signed off before they come on board. As Warren Buffett has lamented - this is the only time when Board members have to step up to the plate when they hire a CEO. When the brown hits the fan it's all way too late and the payout as dictated by the agreed contract is paid out. No point B&M about it, the deal was done years ago.
The media however like to apply "normal person on the street" morals and ethics values to what these cats do. It doesn't gel and isn't relevant....but it does get everyone into a huffy and sell lots of papers.
Just on that - I saw ol' twinkle toes from HIH has been let out and also feels no "guilt". These boys play hard ball.
The take home message for me is this : Do not, under any circumstances, subjogate the responsibility for looking after your money. No one is there with any teeth (Police / ASIC etc) to do anything - despite the reassurances and reams of legislation. No one will get your money back if it is "lost" and someone was "supposed" to be looking at it while you did something else.
Advisers won't help, no matter how much you pay them.....and if you try and get your investment capital back via legal means, it'll cost you three times that in legal fees to force out maybe 15% of what you lost, after 10 years of court battles.
Bottom line - Paddle your own canoe and stand up and take 100% responsibility. This is where freehold property, owned and controlled 100% by the investor really comes into it's own.
