SYDNEY: Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull defended the corporate regulator Wednesday, saying it was "sinking its fangs" into suspected wrongdoers after it sued National Australia Bank over allegations of rate-rigging.
The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) has been criticised over its policing of the nation's banks, which have faced allegations of financial planning fraud and claims of manipulating reference rate benchmarks.
The prime minister, who has rejected calls for a national inquiry into the banks, stressed Wednesday that ASIC was "doing its job".
"The watchdog is sinking its fangs into a few suspected culprits and doing his job," he told reporters in Ulladulla, south of Sydney.
ASIC on Tuesday began legal proceedings against the National Australia Bank -- one of the country's "big four" banks, which regularly rake in multi-billion-dollar profits.
The proceedings relate to NAB's alleged manipulation of the bank bill swap reference rate, a benchmark used to set the price of Australian financial products such as bonds and loans.
"It is alleged that NAB traded in a manner that was unconscionable and intended to create an artificial price for bank bills on 50 occasions during the period of 8 June 2010 and 24 December 2012," ASIC said.
NAB chief risk officer David Gall said the lender took the allegations seriously and was fully cooperating, but the bank did not agree with ASIC's claims.
ASIC, like its counterparts in the United States and Britain, has been probing multinational banks over benchmark interest rate-rigging.
The regulator recently hauled two other major Australian lenders, Westpac and ANZ, to court over allegations they manipulated the interbank lending rate.
Leading Australian financial institutions have hit the headlines in recent years over allegations of dodgy financial advice, life insurance and mortgage fraud.
Turnbull's conservative government has responded to public anger by boosting funding to ASIC and appointing a special prosecutor to investigate financial crime.
But it has refused to back calls from the Labor opposition for a royal commission into banking misconduct.
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