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After the revelations of various inquiries into Crown’s conduct,members of the public expect the former senior executives and directors of Crown would face legal consequences.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) will need to brace for the impact. The same howls of protest that followed the financial services royal commission that branded the corporate regulator weak and/or captive to the big end of town will ring loudly.

ASIC has not officially explained why it could not mount a case that directors breached their legal duty to exercise their powers and discharge their duties with the degree of care and diligence.

It seems to believe it could not win an action against any of Crown’s former senior management and board - all of which have now left the company in a major cleanout exercise and been replaced by a highly credentialed board and chief executive,Steve McCann,whose number one task is to fix the mess left behind.

There are also suggestions that ASIC was constrained by admissibility of evidence and the statute of limitations. Either way,it seems that on the available evidence,any wrongdoing did not meet the very high standard required to win such a case.

ASIC might argue that its decision not to pursue Crown’s former board and executives is not tantamount to a finding of innocence but the practical effect is the same. Reputations have been damaged but former executives,in particular,left the company with handsome payouts so have suffered no financial penalty.

And all are free to govern other companies.

The list of high-profile directors includes Helen Coonan,Harold Mitchell and Andrew Demetriou.

The commissioner of the NSW inquiry,Patricia Bergin,who found Crown unsuitable to hold a licence,describedAndrew Demetriou’s testimony as “unedifying” andfound John Alexander’s take on his relationship with James Packer as “blind to reality or lacking in candour”.

She noted Robert Rankin’s stint as Crown’s chairman was “lacklustre” and Geoff Dixon’s failure to recognise risks for the casino operator was “inexplicable”. These are criticisms,but ultimately don’t rise to the level of warranting charges.

The head of Melbourne’s royal commission,Ray Finkelstein,said he had found illegal and unacceptable behaviour at every level of the casino giant.

He found Crown’s board “failed to carry out its responsibilities to ensure that the organisation satisfied its legal and regulatory obligations” and “many senior executives involved in the misconduct were indifferent to their ethical,moral and sometimes legal obligations”,but did not single out any breaches of the law committed by individual directors or executives.

Finding against individual directors was not within the remit of any of the three inquiries. Investigating any potential breaches of duty by directors falls at ASIC’s feet.

From a public relations perspective,ASIC’s decision not to take any enforcement action couldn’t have come at a more inconvenient time. It coincided with financial crimes watchdog AUSTRAC’s highly publicisedlegal case against Crown in which it accuses the company of breaching anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism finance laws and continuing to contravene the law due to wholly inadequate oversight by management.

It said Crown breached money laundering and counterterrorism laws innumerable times and there was a failure to mitigate risk that its casinos were used for money laundering.

“They also failed to carry out appropriate ongoing customer due diligence including on some very high-risk customers,” AUSTRAC chief executive Nicole Rose said in a statement.

It certainly reads like a tale of two regulators.

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