Good morning everyone. I’d like to pay my respects to the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, their ancestors past and present, and extend my respects to any Aboriginal people here with us today.

It’s a pleasure to be here in Sydney with colleagues from across government, industry, academia and the regulatory community.

We are opening this conference at a moment when cross‑border money flows have become the central operating environment for fraud and financial crime in our region. 

Not at the margins, not occasionally, but as the default setting.

The theme of today’s conference, navigating cross‑border money flows, could not be more timely. 

When we look across the Asia‑Pacific right now, what we see is not a collection of isolated risks, but a highly integrated financial crime system taking shape. 

A system that links industrial‑scale scam operations, cryptocurrency and digital payment channels, and traditional asset‑based integration, particularly property. 

All of it operates across borders, across regulatory regimes and across sectors.

My role this morning is to set the scene. Not to go deep into technical detail, but to frame the risk landscape we are collectively dealing with and to foreground the discussions that will follow today across AML, fraud and payment systems.

I want to talk about how cross‑border financial crime in our region is now structured, where the key vulnerabilities and blind spots sit, and what that means for regulators and industry going forward.

If we compare today’s environment to even five or ten years ago, one shift stands out very clearly. 

We are not only dealing with domestic criminals moving money offshore. 

We are dealing with professional money laundering organisations that have created cross‑border financial crime ecosystems operating across Southeast Asia, the Pacific and beyond, at a speed and scale we have not seen before.

These ecosystems are regional in their design, technologically enabled, and commercially structured. 

They generate illicit funds in one jurisdiction, move them through several others, and integrate them into the legitimate economy somewhere else, often far removed from the original crime.

Australia is part of that system. 

Not because our controls are weak, but because we are deeply connected to the region through trade, migration, education, tourism, finance and digital services. 

The same legitimate connections that support economic growth are the connections criminals exploit.

When we talk about cross‑border financial crime today, we are really talking about three linked questions. 

Where is the money generated, how does it move, and where does it ultimately land?

Let’s start with where the money is generated.

Across parts of Southeast Asia, we continue to see the growth of industrial‑scale scam operations, often referred to as scam factories. 

These are not ad‑hoc fraud rings. 

They are structured operations with large workforces, scripted social engineering, and the ability to operate across multiple time zones and languages while targeting victims globally.

The proceeds from these scams are generated digitally, at scale, and almost immediately moved offshore. 

Crucially, these scams are designed from the outset to be cross‑border. 

Victims may be in Australia, infrastructure may be hosted elsewhere, operators may sit in a third jurisdiction, and the funds may transit several more before reaching their destination.

From a regulatory perspective, this matters because the crime itself is geographically fragmented, and so are the detection opportunities.

The second layer is how the money moves.

This is where we have seen the most dramatic change. 

Cryptocurrency and digital payment channels have fundamentally altered the economics of cross‑border laundering. 

Funds can now move between platforms, across multiple jurisdictions, within minutes or even seconds, and with far less reliance on traditional banking rails.

We are already seeing clear cross‑border crypto flows linked to scam activity in our region, including through digital exchanges, peer‑to‑peer platforms and crypto ATMs. 

These channels significantly reduce friction, and with it, the number of natural intervention points.

At the same time, traditional methods have not disappeared. Instead, we are seeing hybrid laundering models emerge. 

Cryptocurrency is often used for rapid movement and layering, followed by conversion into fiat and integration through conventional assets and businesses.

Which brings us to where the money ultimately lands.

Despite all the innovation in digital finance, one thing remains constant. 

Criminals still want stable, tangible assets. 

Across the region, including in Australia, property continues to feature as a preferred integration mechanism.

What has not changed as much is the asset itself and the pathway into it. 

Funds that originate in online scams or cyber‑enabled fraud can now move rapidly through digital channels, be laundered across multiple jurisdictions, and enter property markets far removed from the original crime. 

By the time those funds reach the point of integration, their criminal origin may be extremely difficult to detect, particularly where intermediaries are fragmented, ownership structures are complex, or regulatory coverage is uneven.

This is a critical point for today’s discussions. 

Digital crime does not stay digital. It almost always ends in the real economy.

The third major shift is who is doing this.

We are increasingly seeing regional professional money laundering organisations whose sole function is to move illicit finance across borders. 

These groups operate independently of the underlying crime, provide laundering as a service, and specialise by channel, jurisdiction or asset class.

They recruit money mules across multiple countries, establish shell structures across jurisdictions, and understand regulatory differences well enough to exploit them.

Money‑mule recruitment illustrates this clearly. 

Criminal networks deliberately leverage legitimate regional migration flows, including students, workers and temporary residents, to build mule networks that span borders. 

From an institutional perspective, this creates real challenges. 

Identity signals are fragmented, behavioural patterns are diluted, and risk often only becomes visible when viewed across jurisdictions.

No single bank, regulator or financial intelligence unit sees the full picture on its own.

All of this brings us to an uncomfortable but necessary question. 

Are our regulatory frameworks aligned with how financial crime actually operates today?

There are several systemic blind spots worth calling out.

One is the gap between speed and control. 

Many frameworks still assume manual onboarding, document‑heavy verification and linear transaction monitoring. 

But criminal money now moves faster than those processes. 

When regulation relies on physical or slow controls, we risk creating friction for legitimate activity while criminals route around us digitally.

Another is jurisdictional fragmentation. Across the Asia‑Pacific, regulatory maturity varies significantly. 

Some jurisdictions have highly advanced AML and intelligence capabilities, while others face structural, capacity or governance constraints.

Criminals understand this and deliberately channel funds through weaker points in the regional chain before entering well‑regulated markets.

A third blind spot is sectoral silos. Scams, payments, crypto, banking, property and telecommunications are often regulated separately. 

Criminals do not operate that way. 

They move seamlessly across sectors, exploiting gaps between regimes.

The central reality is that cross‑border financial crime is only as controllable as the weakest link in the regional system. 

That is why regional cooperation is no longer a policy aspiration. It is an operational necessity.

There are strong foundations to build on. 

Financial intelligence units already cooperate extensively through international mechanisms, and Australia exchanges intelligence regularly with partners across Southeast Asia and the Pacific. 

But the next frontier is clear. 

We need near‑real‑time cross‑border intelligence sharing, public‑private partnerships that operate regionally rather than just domestically, and shared prioritisation of the highest‑risk corridors.

Criminals already operate this way. Our response needs to match that reality.

For boards and senior executives, particularly in regulated institutions, the implications are direct. 

Cross‑border risk is not abstract. It is a core financial crime exposure. 

Effective governance means understanding which jurisdictions create the highest risk, identifying key cross‑border flows, and prioritising controls where harm actually concentrates.

Trying to cover everything equally is not effective risk management. Focus matters.

For regulators, the challenge is to remain outcomes‑focused.

Technology itself is not the risk. Digital finance is not the enemy. The risk lies in controls that no longer align with reality.

As we look ahead, not just to today’s sessions but to the rest of this decade, some trends are clear. 

We are likely to see continued growth in industrialised scam activity, faster and more sophisticated cross‑border money movement, and deeper use of automation and artificial intelligence by criminals.

But we also have a real opportunity. 

We can build regional intelligence partnerships that operate at speed, regulatory frameworks that support effective digital controls, and coordinated interventions across banks, platforms, telecommunications providers and governments.

Scams and cross‑border financial crime are not inevitable. 

They exist because systems allow them to. And systems can be redesigned.

Let me close with one simple message.

Cross‑border financial crime in the Asia‑Pacific is a shared problem operating in a shared system. 

Criminals exploit its connections. We need to strengthen them.

That requires flexibility in regulation, openness to innovation, and genuine multinational collaboration. 

The goal is not to preserve familiar processes. The goal is to reduce harm.

If we focus on solving the problem rather than defending the method, we can build a safer regional financial system together.

Thank you.