Glossary

Helps people or entities to escape or undermine the laws, rules and jurisdictions elsewhere. They can be used to: 

• underpay tax 
• launder money 
• evade sanctions 
• fund terrorist groups.

Financial instruments that hold monetary value and are used to grow wealth and generate income.

Any offence, committed in Australia or overseas, where the punishment under Australian law would be 2 or more years in prison.

A company that legally exists but hasn’t done any business activities.

A bank that:

• is incorporated in a foreign country and is authorised to carry on a banking business there
• has no physical presence in the country in which it’s incorporated
• isn’t affiliated with another banking company that’s incorporated 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.

A company that exists on paper and are often used to hold assets, manage transactions or structure ventures.

A type of virtual asset. Stablecoins’ value is tied to fiat currencies, commodities or financial instruments. They offer a less volatile alternative to cryptocurrencies.

A card, document, app or other things that stores monetary value or allows the holder to access monetary value. For example, a gift card for $50. 

Debit cards, credit cards, accounts, gaming chips or tokens, betting instruments, virtual assets, virtual asset wallets or things used for purchasing lottery tickets are not stored value cards.

Structuring is where a person deliberately splits large:

• cash transactions into smaller ones to avoid threshold reporting of $10,000 or more
• amounts of cash between travellers in a group to avoid reporting.

Structuring is a money laundering technique and is against the law.