Ricky Gillespie was a senior financial planner for CBA’s financial planning subsidiary, Commonwealth Financial Planning Limited (CFPL).
In October 2017, he pleaded guilty to a rolled-up charge relating to the forgery of 33 documents between 2007 and 2009 and was handed the A$3,000 (£1,698, $2,265, €1,926) fine on 12 December.
Permanent ban
According to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Asic), the charges brought against Gillespie related to forging the signatures of a number of the bank’s clients during the process of providing financial advice.
The fake signatures were on various administrative and compliance documents, including applications for financial products and internal documents used as part of CFPL’s internal audit process.
Gillespie was permanently banned from providing any financial services by Asic in November 2012 after it was found that he had forged client signatures, provided advice to a client that was not appropriate and failed to comply with financial services laws.
CBA subsequently reviewed the advice that Gillespie had provided to each of his 57 clients and paid around A$2.2m in compensation to 33 of them.
In addition, CBS refunded approximately A$88,000 for ongoing advice fees and interest to 22 clients.
