Former director of Northern Star Resources Limited charged with insider trading (ASIC, 2014)

Judgment entered

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In October 2014 ASIC announced that Peter Farris, a director of Northern Star Resources, was charged with two counts of insider trading over the sale of 750,000 shares in November 2012. He pleaded guilty, and in July 2015 the Supreme Court of Western Australia sentenced him to two years and nine months' imprisonment, fully suspended, with a A$65,000 pecuniary penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

A$65k

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars. This regulator states penalties in AUD. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission announced the charges on October 8, 2014 as release 14-186MR; later editor's notes record a guilty plea and convictions entered in February 2015, with the plea facts disputed and sentencing listed for July 2015.

ASIC alleged Farris sold the shares between November 28 and 29, 2012 while a director, in possession of information about a proposed sell-down transaction, and thereby avoided a loss of about A$123,975.

The A$495,000 figure earlier recorded as a penalty is the maximum fine per charge stated in the release, not an amount imposed. The final sentence is not in the release; the status is left as recorded.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

ASIC's own later publications record that, after a May 2015 hearing to decide how much Farris knew when he traded, the court found he traded while aware the information was inside information. He was sentenced in July 2015 to two years and nine months' imprisonment, fully suspended, and a pecuniary penalty of A$65,000 was imposed; he also consented to forfeit the A$123,975 loss he avoided. The sentence length is recorded as 33 months, but none of it was served in custody because it was suspended. The exact sentencing day is not given in the ASIC pages read; July 15, 2015 is taken from the date in a news report's address, so the day is less certain than the month. The original ASIC sentencing release (15-186MR) is no longer on ASIC's site.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Insider trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2014-10-08 ASIC media release
2. 2015-07-15 Farris sentenced to 2 years 9 months, fully suspended, and A$65,000 pecuniary penalty (day taken from a news report date; ASIC gives month only)

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• ASIC media release
• ASIC Market Integrity Update, issue 63, August 2015
• ASIC, Insider trading: Five years of results

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.