A serious offence is:

• any offence against a Commonwealth, state or territory law punishable by imprisonment for 2 years or more
• an offence against a law of a foreign country that involves an act or omission, and would be punishable by imprisonment for 2 years or more if it had occurred in Australia, 

See

Subsection 39B(2) of the AML/CTF Act

Structuring is where a person:

• splits a single transaction into 2 or more transactions with the sole or dominant purpose of avoiding a transaction being reported in threshold transaction reports
• travels with cash or monetary instruments in a way that has the sole or dominant purpose of avoiding cross-border movement reporting. For example, a family asking a child to carry cash so that each individual is under the threshold.

Structuring is an offence under the AML/CTF Act. 

See

Threshold transaction reports

Cross-border movement reports

AML/CTF Act 2006 sections 142 and 143

A shell bank is a corporation that:

• is incorporated in a foreign country
• is authorised to carry on a banking business in its country of incorporation
• has no physical presence in the country in which it is incorporated, and
• isn’t an affiliate of another corporation that’s incorporated in a particular country, authorised to carry on banking business in its country of incorporation, and has a physical presence in its country of incorporation.

Physical presence means the corporation carries on a banking business at a physical place in that country and has at least one full-time employee who performs banking-related duties there. It involves meaningful decision-making and management.

See section 94A of the AML/CTF Act

For the purposes of a correspondent banking relationship, a financial institution can determine who is a senior officer, depending on the size and complexity of the organisation. A senior officer doesn’t have to be a person in executive management.

The senior officer should have sufficient knowledge of the business’s money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation financing risk exposure. They should also have sufficient authority to make decisions affecting the business’s risk exposure.