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The Australian Government has been accused of being hypocritical as Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton and others have all been calling out for Westpac to be held accountable for the 23 million breaches of AML/CTF laws when they are not holding themselves to account. Anthony Quinn, CEO of Arctic Intelligence, a software business specialising in audit,…

In June 2019, AUSTRAC ordered Afterpay to appoint an external auditor after the agency identified concerns with Afterpay’s compliance with anti-money-laundering laws.  The final report from external independent auditor Neil Jeans was provided to AUSTRAC today. In the final report, Jeans broadly praised Afterpay’s compliance efforts and attributed the breaches to poor advice from an…

The Financial Action Taskforce (FATF) has suspended the evaluation of financial crime laws mid-way through an examination of Australia’s progress in the area. A FATF spokesman said, “In October, the FATF decided to temporarily pause the start of all scheduled follow-up assessments – this is not an Australia specific decision.”  But was there more to…

Hot on the heels of Westpac’s announcement three weeks ago that it has provisioned hundreds of millions of dollars for additional remediation costs and a potential fine by AUSTRAC, over its failure to report “a large number” of International Funds Transfer Instructions (IFTIs) it was NABs turn to make an announcement. In its annual report…

Australia is still lagging behind global standards in the developed world when it comes to combating the flow of illicit money entering the property market. AUSTRAC has estimated that there were AUD$1billion worth of suspicious transactions in the Australian property market from China in the 2016 fiscal year.   The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has…

Following the discovery of law firms not complying with anti-money laundering regulations, the Solicitor Regulation Authority (SRA) is planning to launch money laundering investigations into 7,000 law firms. Solicitor firms that fail to comply will potentially face enforcement action. In March 2019, the SRA wrote to 400 firms asking them to demonstrate compliance with the…

Yesterday, AUSTRAC released the Mutual Banking Sector Risk Assessment report which concluded that the mutual banking sector has a high level of vulnerability to financial crime with the main threat being money laundering and with the overall money laundering and terrorism financing risk assessed as medium. According to the report, the mutual banking sector has…

The AML/CTF and Other Legislation Amendment Bill was introduced into Federal Parliament on the 17th October 2019. “The bill is the next phase of the government’s reforms to bolster our anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing, or AML/CTF, regime, to prevent criminals from enjoying the profits of their illegal activities, and to stop funds falling into the…