Former Gunns Ltd chairman ordered to pay $500,000 pecuniary penalty for insider trading (ASIC, 2015)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 2, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, with sampled and disputed records read a second time. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

Report an error in this record (asic-15-387mr-insider-trading-2015) by email

In December 2015 former Gunns chairman John Gay agreed in mediation, and the Tasmanian Supreme Court ordered, a A$500,000 pecuniary penalty under the Proceeds of Crime Act following his 2013 insider trading conviction.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

A$500k

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 outcome on December 15, 2015 as release 15-387MR.

Gay was convicted on August 23, 2013 of insider trading over his early December 2009 sale of Gunns shares before half-year results, and fined A$50,000 at sentence. The Commonwealth prosecutor then sought a pecuniary penalty for the benefit he derived, and on December 11, 2015 the court made an order, agreed at mediation, for A$500,000 payable within 120 days.

The A$50,000 earlier recorded was the criminal fine; the order this release reports is the A$500,000 pecuniary penalty.

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.

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. 2015-12-15 ASIC media release

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

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.