Former NSW adviser hit with three-year correctional order

23 May 2022

Former NSW adviser Ezzat-Daniel Nesseim has been sentenced to a three-year intensive correctional order for engaging in dishonest conduct and providing falsified documents to the corporate regulator.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) says the correctional order includes one year of home detention. The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions prosecuted the matter after a referral from ASIC.

ASIC says Nesseim, from Pymble, engaged in repeated dishonest conduct between August 16 and October 11 in 2017, including giving forged wholesale client certificates to the regulator. He was trying to influence an ASIC officer that they were genuine documents relevant to the regulator’s decision about whether to continue its investigation.

He also knowingly gave ASIC false answers and information after the regulator questioned him – both under oath and by way of statutory notice – about the forged wholesale certificates.

“Instead of showing the honesty and integrity required of someone who works in the financial services sector, Mr Nesseim deliberately lied to ASIC, using fabricated evidence and lied under oath in an attempt to evade ASIC’s scrutiny,” Deputy Chairman Sarah Court said.

“Where ASIC suspects someone has deliberately lied to us, either directly or by providing us with false documents, we will not hesitate to refer them for prosecution.”

At the time of the offending, Nesseim ran a financial services business called Smart Financial Strategies.

He is currently the GM Accord Partners, a business operated by Foresight Enterprises Pty Ltd, of which he is the sole director.

As a result of his conviction, he is automatically disqualified from managing corporations for a period of five years from the date of his conviction, ASIC said.

ASIC in March 2018 banned him permanently from providing financial services and in July 2019 barred him permanently from engaging in credit activities.