Collapsed software company GetSwift has been ordered to pay a $15 million fine and its directors have been slapped with long bans, with a damning Federal Court decision describing the failed company as the “unacceptable face of start-up capitalism”.

Former GetSwift executive chairman Bane Hunter – the “principal instigator of the wrongdoing”, according to the court – has been ordered to pay a $2 million fine and banned from managing corporations for 15 years.