The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) has overturned a ban against former Spaceship Capital director, chairman and responsible manager Paul Ernest Dortkamp.
In June, ASIC banned Mr Dortkamp from performing functions as an officer and responsible manager of a financial services business for a period of two years.
The regulator said that an investigation had found Mr Dortkamp failed to understand all of the financial services offered by Spaceship under its licence.
In response, Mr Dortkamp lodged an application with the AAT for a review of ASIC’s decision, and a hearing took place from 4 to 7 October.
Delivering the AAT’s verdict on 20 December, deputy president Brian Rayment concluded that, based on the evidence at the hearing, he was not satisfied that Mr Dortkamp failed to act, did not understand the financial services which his company was providing, or is incompetent.
When ASIC handed down its ban in June, it said that, in late 2018 and into early 2019, Mr Dortkamp failed to take the necessary steps in relation to a fault in Spaceship Super Fund’s consumer onboarding system in a timely way.
According to the regulator, this fault resulted in an unknown number of members being assigned to the incorrect superannuation product.
“ASIC found that Mr Dortkamp had incorrectly concluded that the fault was not Spaceship’s responsibility, and therefore that it was not his responsibility to deal with it,” the regulator said at the time.
“ASIC considers that this misunderstanding of the scope of Spaceship’s function was a fundamental oversight for someone in his position.”
As a result, ASIC had argued that Mr Dortkamp was not competent to perform functions as an officer or responsible manager of a financial services business.
