The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has responded to media claims on clearing its public information with a “technical oversight” despite that the documents were dated for more than a decade ago.

ASIC explained that it deleted more than 100 documents from its website's public database in relation to exemptions from financial reports issued to collapsed public companies.

The documents were deleted around the beginning of this year, which coincides with the start of the Senate inquiry into the condition of the industry and the “involvement and activities of ASIC” before and after the collapse of a company.

According to the Senate, "ASIC must cause of copy of an exemption to be published in the Gazette," which falls under the Corporations Act.

''The instruments do not need to be gazetted or posted to an external website,'' ASIC said.

''However, there was a technical error that made these available through ASIC's publicly accessible registers (on payment of the appropriate fee).”

ASIC also explained that access to instruments were stopped after they detected errors, deleting 340 orders for listed public companies.

According to Keffre Knapp, a lecturer in financial accounting at the Australian School of Business at the University of New South Wales, it was a big deal for ASIC to remove the information when its governing legislation wants any public information available.

Mr. Knapp said ASIC removed at least 113 section 340 orders for listed public companies since late last year or early this year. The Senate inquiry requested for data submissions in November and remained open.

Documents that were available for years on ASIC website included John Elliot's Waterwheel Holdings, Golden West Refining, and collapsed companies like National Textiles and Croesus Mining.

"ASIC's decision to delete a significant number of documents from the public data base was executed without any public consultation, explanation or announcement and ASIC may not have even considered the public interest before removing these hitherto publicly available documents,'' Mr. Knapp said.

He also criticised ASIC for manipulating their public database when a Senate inquiry is still on going.