Punishment reduced for banned director

In a statement, ASIC said the Administrative Appeals Tribunal has approved an agreement reached between ASIC and Paul Duncan of Queensland to reduce the ban from four years to three.

Mr Duncan's ban commenced on 21 May 2015 and will now cease on 20 May 2018, the statement said.

ASIC took action in June 2015 after it said it found a website where Mr Duncan's company, Active Capital Managers, made false representations concerning the existence of a fund by the name of 'Exalt Managed Futures Fund'.

Investigations found the fund did not exist "nor was it ever in existence", according to ASIC.

In a comment to ifa, Mr Duncan said the representations on his website were there for "technical analysis by overseas product platforms as part of their due diligence".

"The documents were not 'offer' documents, and no offers were made to anyone or were intended to be made to anyone until the product was produced at some point and such offers would not be made by me."

Mr Duncan added that ASIC had looked for victims, and found none.

"I acknowledged from the start that the documents could have been accessed by persons they were not intended for, which was an oversight and I offered to retrain or an enforceable undertaking such as supervision which would have been appropriate, but ASIC wanted a banning based on the 'possibility' of promotion and the further 'possibility' of 'unknown' persons being misled," he said.