March 16 (Reuters) - Australia's corporate regulator said on Monday that the New South Wales Supreme Court has ordered Macquarie Securities (MSAL), a unit of Macquarie Group MQG.AX, to pay a penalty of A$35 million ($24.49 million) for misreporting millions of short sales over several years.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission $(ASIC)$ had taken the top investment bank to court in May, alleging it misreported up to 1.5 billion short sales over a decade and a half.
The court found that MSAL, the group's brokerage arm, had failed to correctly report at least 73 million short sales between December 11, 2009, and February 14, 2024, ASIC said.
The regulator added that around 298 million to 1.5 billion short sales were estimated to be misreported during that period.
"Inaccurate reporting was due to serious deficiencies in MSAL’s systems, processes, and controls, many of which remained undetected for more than a decade, despite a number of internal reviews," ASIC said.
In addition to the financial penalty, the Court also ordered MSAL to engage an independent expert to assess its short sale and regulatory reporting systems and processes, and to pay ASIC’s costs.
Earlier in December last year, MSAL had agreed to pay the penalty of A$35 million for systemic failures that led to years of misreporting millions of short sales.
Shares of the company were up 0.2% as of 2341 GMT.
($1 = 1.4294 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Rajasik Mukherjee; editing by Rashmi Aich)
((Rajasik.Mukherjee@thomsonreuters.com;))