AFP the main game at Leighton, says ASIC ENFORCEMENT: The corporate watchdog has barked back at criticism of its meek response to the Leighton Holdings foreign bribery allegations, saying the Australian Federal Police's criminal investigation is the "main game." Australian Securities & Investments Commission chairman Greg Medcraft told a Melbourne business lunch that bribery of foreign officials was a law mainly enforced by the AFP, with ASIC having jurisdiction only in a small number of cases where directors might have breached their duties. "The main game is the criminal prosecution -- losing your liberty for 10 years and a maximum fine of $1.7 million," Mr Medcraft said, noting that directors only faced a $200,000 fine and a five-year ban for a breach of their duties. What do you think has the biggest deterrent effect -- a fine or jail? Losing some of your money or all of your liberty? ASIC has been targeted following reports by Fairfax Media that corruption was rife in Leighton's foreign arm, more so than Leighton disclosed to the market in February 2012. The reports cited ASIC's failure to conduct rigorous investigations in the two years since Leighton alerted the AFP that it might have breached bribery laws in Iraq. ASIC, according to the reports, had not spoken to any witnesses or suspects, despite witnesses telling the AFP they had grave concerns about corporate offences in the company. Independent senator Nick Xenophon accused ASIC of being asleep at the wheel, while Labor senator Doug Cameron said the case demonstrated the need for change at ASIC. But Mr Medcraft said the AFP were the "bribery specialists," with a dedicated fraud and anti-corruption centre, access to international intelligence through Interpol, and officers in other countries as well as forensic accountants and lawyers. ASIC, he said, would never jeopardise an AFP criminal investigation by launching simultaneous civil proceedings. Courts would always protect a defendant's right to silence in a criminal prosecution and this would be compromised by allowing civil proceedings with similar facts. ASIC, however, was liaising with the AFP in the Leighton matter. "We don't need to create a formal investigation if the AFP is undertaking that process and they share the information with us, as they did in the (Reserve Bank subsidiary) Securency case," Mr Medcraft said. We only create a formal investigation when we need to use our compulsory powers to examine witnesses. If another agency is undertaking an investigation and we have a memorandum of understanding and we are working with them, there is no need necessarily for us to create a formal investigation. The ASIC chief said his agency would "let the main (AFP) game play out" in the Leighton case, keeping in mind there was a six-year limitation period for civil offences under the Corporations Act. Mr Medcraft said that the main deterrent for directors and company officers was not so much in the Corporations Act, but the "taint to their reputation."