Palantir is under pressure around the world but in Australia it is mollycoddled. Michael West on the regulators’ double standards.
Palantir. Rejected by Switzerland, its large military and health contracts under pressure in the UK, politicians in the US returning their campaign donations, protestors forcing office changes. The controversial tech company is under fire under the world.
Not so in sleepy Australia however.
Palantir, whose executives brag about how their lethal software kills people, has been welcomed with little resistance; awarded government contracts with nary a public tender, as well as corporate deals with Coles and the likes.
Do our regulators care? Does ASIC care that Palantir is in breach of Australia’s Corporations Act as revealed (below) in these pages?
Founded by Zionist libertarian Peter Thiel – infamous for declaring that freedom and democracy are incompatible – Palantir’s corporate fortunes blossomed with the rise of Donald Trump, the surveillance activities of ICE and the ongoing genocide in Gaza where its tech has played a key role in targeting people for the IDF.
Meanwhile, Thiel and his 2IC Alex Karp have shown a complete disregard for the laws of Australia as they have lobbied their way into government mandates in this country with the help of former Labor minister Mike Kelly.
To spell it out … ASIC
This year, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) announced its enforcement priorities included financial reporting misconduct including the failure to lodge audited financial reports in accordance with the Corporations Act, 2001.
This priority might be two decades too late for a company like Oracle Corporation (with its deplorable compliance track record in this country) but it may be better late than never.
ASIC’s announcement does pose the question though, should the corporate regulator not prioritise enforcing financial reporting obligations against large companies including those owned by multinationals every year?
Why not every year?
Multinational owned companies are known for their penchant of ‘restructuring’ their financial affairs to avoid and evade Australian income taxes. Regularly, routinely.
Why audited financial reports?
The preparation and lodgement of audited financial statements under the Corporations Act is an important safeguard that mitigates the risk of income tax evasion.
Firstly, auditors are required to report to ASIC if there are reasonable grounds to suspect a significant contravention of the Corporations Act. For example, accounting fraud that facilitates income tax evasion.
Secondly, the lodgement of an annual financial report by no later than four months after the balance date places a time stamp on accounting for transactions which makes it much harder to backdate invoices or be creative potentially years later to facilitate income tax evasion.
Are politicians aware of these basics? These safeguards to Australia’s tax base?
‘Special purpose’ approach by accountants hides corporate secrets
After becoming aware of widespread accounting fraud by multinationals (revealed above more than a decade ago), the Federal Parliament brought legislation to ensure that corporate tax entities owned by multinationals would prepare and lodge ‘General Purpose’ financial reports with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) but without any requirement for the financial reports to be audited.
These unaudited financial reports might satisfy obligations under section 3CA of the Tax Administration Act 1953 but they don’t satisfy much else.
External parties of multinational-owned companies would place low credibility on annual financial reports that have no audit assurance. In the specific case of the ATO and its work on multinational tax avoidance, these
unaudited financial reports are likely to be next to useless.
Palantir breaches
So what exactly is the point of unaudited annual financial reports on the public record? It is a mystery why the Parliament thinks unaudited annual financial reports by multinational owned companies should be taken seriously.
It seems ASIC doesn’t take these unaudited financial reports seriously either. The ATO passes the unaudited financial reports onto ASIC for publication on ASIC’s registers that are accessible by the general public.
ASIC then uploads the unaudited financial reports but without making it known what financial year they relate to. ASIC expects members of the general public to play financial reporting roulette.
You have to pay $50 to find out what year.
Let’s take the unaudited financial report of Palantir Technologies Australia Pty Ltd shown on ASIC’s register with the date December 19, 2025. Pay ASIC $50 and you can find out what year that report is for.
And what is the point of untimely unaudited financial reports on the public record?
The unaudited financial report of Palantir Technologies Australia Pty Ltd for 31 December 2024 was signed by a director on 21 November 2025, that is, nearly 11 months after balance date or nearly an extra 7 months more than allowed for an Australian owned company that prepares annual financial reports under the Corporations Act.
Perhaps we should be grateful for small mercies. The unaudited financial report of Palantir Technologies Australia Pty Ltd for 31 December 2023
is missing altogether from ASIC’s public register
A multinational owned company with a missing financial report from a public register. What’s the worst that could be happening? Perhaps it was never prepared because Australian financial reporting is just so inconvenient and so expensive for multinationals that seek to minimise their Australian taxes.
Lost, forgotten, evaporated, whatever
Perhaps the ATO forgot to forward it to ASIC. Perhaps ASIC lost it. Perhaps ASIC’s enforcement priority for 2026 should be to address regulatory incompetence rather than financial reporting misconduct.
Surely it would be fair for our regulators to demand audited financial reports from multinational owned companies?
The Federal Parliament seems to support a duality of financial reporting requirements depending on whether a corporation conducting business in Australia is Australian owned or multinational owned.
If Gina Rinehart, why not Palantir?
Australian owned companies subject to annual financial reporting requirements in the Corporations Act are not afforded the luxury and cheapness of preparing and lodging unaudited financial reports.
How can it be fair that Australian owned corporations have to prepare audited annual financial reports but multinationals conducting business in Australia do not?
The directors of Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd found out the hard way from ASIC that they have to prepare and lodge audited annual financial reports by a deadline each year not exceeding four months after their balance date.
The directors of Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd, including the rich and famous Gina Rinehart, could well wonder why their Australian owned company was pinged by ASIC for not fronting up with audited annual financial reports by the deadline when multinational-owned companies like Oracle Corporation and Palantir Technologies Australia seem to have an ASIC free pass.
Again, be grateful for small mercies. At least financial reporting misconduct was an enforcement priority of ASIC’s for a short time when they looked into Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd back in 2011.
Regulatory apartheid
According to the directors of Palantir Technologies Australia Pty Ltd, “The Company does not have a statutory requirement to prepare financial statements in accordance with Australian Accounting Standards.”
In other words, the directors believe that the Company does not have to prepare an audited annual financial report in accordance with the Corporations Act. This belief is likely to be based on a false understanding of how the Corporations Act applies.
ASIC Regulatory Guide 58 sets out how the Corporations Act requirements for financial reporting apply to Palantir Technologies Australia Pty Ltd as a small proprietary company.
The Company is required to prepare and lodge an audited annual financial report with ASIC except if: (1) the Company is consolidated in financial statements lodged with ASIC by a registered foreign company; or (2) the Company is not part of a large group as defined in ASIC Corporations (Foreign-Controlled Company Reports) Instrument 2017/204.
Apparently, Palantir is relying on the second exception. ASIC’s public register for the Company shows a document dated 10 September 2010 entitled “Notification of Resol. By Directors of A Small Pty Company Which Is Not Part of Large Group (384)”.
Palantir .. a “small company” que?
It seems that ASIC has accepted that the Company is not part of a large group ever since it received this notification without question.
ASIC would do better with multinational financial reporting under the Corporations Act if it took the trouble of revisiting its own words in its own Instrument 2017/204. For the purpose of this Instrument, a group must include:
(1) The entity (e.g. Palantir Technologies Australia Pty Ltd);
(2) Any other entity which controlled the entity during, or at the end of, the financial year that carries on business in Australia (e.g. Palantir Technologies Inc.)
(3) Any other entity that is controlled by that other entity that controls the entity (e.g. subsidiaries of Palantir Technologies Inc.)
But the big contracts
According to publicly available information, Palantir Technologies Inc. has entered into multiple million dollar contracts over the last decade with the Australian Department of Defence for software maintenance and support.
For example, a contract for $2,611,237.78 with a start date of 31 July 2013 and end date of 30 August 2017.
These contracts would strongly indicate that Palantir Technologies Inc is carrying on business in Australia and should be included for the purpose of deciding whether Palantir Technologies Australia Pty Ltd is not part of a large group.
According to Yahoo!finance, Palantir Technologies Inc. had consolidated revenues of $US4.5 billion for the year to 31 December 2024.
Palantir Technologies Australia Pty Ltd is a small proprietary company and not part of a large group you say ASIC? Really? How many billions of revenue would it take before you change your mind?
And, by the way, what is the size of the fine for misleading the regulator?
Facebook did the same
Palantir Technolgies Inc. is not the first multinational at the ASIC rodeo claiming that it has an Australian controlled company that is not part of a large group.
Once Mark Zuckerberg is finished explaining how his related corporations are innocent of causing social media addiction in children, he might care to also explain why he thinks Facebook Australia Pty Ltd was not part of a large group before 2014.
The Australian Parliament would do well to inquire how many other multinational controlled companies do not prepare and lodge audited annual financial reports under the Corporations Act by claiming they are not part of a large group.
It may also like to inquire how such a turgid state of affairs came to exist under the watch and enforcement priorities of ASIC. Australian owned large companies deserve nothing less than a full explanation from ASIC of why it seems to take a different approach to financial reporting misconduct if the owners are multinationals.
Oracle and EY: 42 breaches of the Corporations Act and counting