You’ve heard about the banking royal commission, and you know that the banks are up to something deeply cooked, but you haven’t had time to read story, after story, after story about what exactly is going on. Let us help.

If you didn’t already know, a royal commission is the highest possible form of public inquiry in Australia. Last year, the government finally caved into pressure from Labor, the Greens, some of its own backbenchers, and pretty much everyone else, and commissioned one into our banking system, which had been up to some seriously dodgy stuff.

The commission is looking into a bunch of different things, including misconduct and criminal behaviour in Australia’s banks and big financial institutions.

Already, a major banking executive has resigned prematurely, the government has apologised for not getting this whole thing done sooner, and people are calling for some bankers to get go to jail.

So we present to you: all the worst things to come out of the banking royal commission.

Banks Took Money From Dead People

When someone dies, there’s a one year time period when their bank accounts are wound up by the bank and the money is passed to their living relatives. Makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is that at least five different Commonwealth Bank employees have now admitted to taking fees from these dead-people’s accounts for up to ten years.

Sometimes it was up to $65 per month that was taken out — and because the person who owned the account is dead, it’s obviously pretty tricky for the financial planners to be caught out doing it.

We are just hearing audio of a phone call where a woman purporting to be Donna McKenna rang the public service superannuation fund to find out details of Ms McKenna's funds. We heard under oath from Ms McKenna that she didn't make the calls. #BankingRC

— Michael Janda (@mikejanda) April 24, 2018

Just Guess How Many Times One Bank Gave ‘Inappropriate Advice’

This one is really weird — it’s usually up to each bank to catch and record how many times their employees give inappropriate advice that screws over consumers.

Even through this sketchy system, ANZ still reported a crazy amount of cases where inappropriate advice was handed out. They found 2,810 cases of this in 2015 alone.

In addition, ANZ told the royal commission that there were “multiple” clients who still haven’t been notified that they received dodgy financial advice. A lot of clients are entitled to compensation if their adviser gave them bad advice, so this is kinda important.

One Couple Lost Their Home

Jacqueline McDowall and her husband are nearing on 60 years old, and they turned to Westpac recently for advice on how to manage their money going into retirement.

McDowall wanted to set up a bed-and-breakfast that she and her husband could live in. But the bank’s next moves left her furious:

A financial adviser told the couple to sell their house, borrow $2 million, and take out some life insurance. All in all, the bank nabbed more than $38,000 in fees each year from the couple, and the financial adviser received another $30,000 in commission.

And it turns out that the advice was shoddy: due to laws surrounding self-managed super funds, McDowall couldn’t set up her bed-and-breakfast.

“I just feel now after all the time, after all the fees and insurances… that all along they were just aiming for us to take out an investment property that you can’t live in. I just feel after that, that we had been led up the garden path and had been lied to,” she told the royal commission.

Reading and listening to the Banking Royal Commission. How is it that people are not in jail?? This is staggering. Crime on a daily basis. No wonder the banks didn't want this. I won't be going near a bank for any financial advice.#BankingRC #Criminals

— Daniel Best (@20thCenturyDan) April 17, 2018

It gets worse.

The financial adviser on McDowall’s case got a bonus that year. Westpac didn’t report him to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). Westpac at least offered some compensation, but it wasn’t as much as what McDowall had lost.

And One Bank Lost Count Of How Many Times It Misled The Banking Watchdog

AMP deliberately charged clients for three months, even when they weren’t given any financial advice services.

And when an AMP executive was grilled about the 18 misleading statements that the bank supplied to the industry’s watchdog, ASIC, he lost count:

“There’s so many you’ll have to rely on my count,” said the lawyer questioning him.

Overall, $216 million worth of refunds are going to be handed out to 300,000 clients who copped big fees for services they never got.

The good news: the head of AMP, Craig Meller, has announced that he will resign.

The company could be in for more: thousands of customers today announced that they would take part in a billion-dollar class action lawsuit against the bank.

The Worst Is Yet To Come

Even as I write this the commission is hearing evidence that financial advisers “commonly” forged signatures to move things along.

Calling it a “Political mistake” to delay the Banking Royal Commission by nearly two years shows that Turnbull thinks the delay hurt HIM.

He still doesn’t get that it hurt Australian consumers.https://t.co/pXR8azj4GH

— Tim Watts MP (@TimWattsMP) April 22, 2018

There’s a chance that some of these guys could go to jail. Treasurer Scott Morrison has announced in the past week that the government would try to set up stronger penalties for when banks and their employees do the wrong thing.

“I find what came out of the royal commission, as I said yesterday, deeply disturbing, and this type of despicable behaviour does carry jail sentences under the Corporations Act,” he said.

He’s also pumped another $100 million into ASIC to give them more power to go after the banks.