Learn what happens when you don’t meet your obligations under anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) law.
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If you don’t meet your obligations under AML/CTF law, we can take steps to enforce compliance, seek a penalty or both.
There are 2 types of actions we can take to enforce compliance:
- enforcement actions
- issue a written notice.
Enforcement actions
Enforcement actions are legal actions we can use to make sure reporting entities comply with the law. These may include:
- seeking civil penalty orders and/or injunctions
- accepting enforceable undertakings
- issuing infringement notices
- issuing remedial directions.
Civil penalty orders
We can apply for a civil penalty order from the Federal Court where you have breached your AML/CTF obligations. The Court may then order you to pay a penalty to the Commonwealth. For example, this penalty can be up to 100,000 penalty units for a body corporate and up to 20,000 penalty units for persons other than body corporates.
Learn more about penalty units.
You can read our list of enforcement actions taken.
Enforceable undertaking
An enforceable undertaking sets out the specified actions that you’ll do or refrain from doing to comply with your AML/CTF obligations. It’s a written commitment that you need to offer to the AUSTRAC CEO. You’ll have to commit to take, or not take, specific actions.
Not complying with an enforceable undertaking is a serious matter. If we consider you’ve breached the undertaking, we can apply to the Federal Court to enforce its terms.
These undertakings can be made public. You can read copies of enforceable undertakings made to us.
Infringement notices
We can issue you an infringement notice for not meeting some obligations under the Act. This includes, but is not limited to, specific obligations relating to:
- designating an AML/CTF compliance officer and notifying us
- documenting, approving and following your AML/CTF program
- customer due diligence
- reporting to us
- enrolling with us
- registering with us
- notifying us of changes and certain matters
- providing us with necessary information and forms
- providing us with documentation on request
- complying with notices
- record keeping.
Infringement notices may be made public. Read infringement notices we’ve issued.
Remedial directions
A remedial direction is an instruction in writing from us that you have breached or are breaching certain parts of the Act and that you need to take specific actions to:
- comply with the breached provisions
- make sure you don’t breach the same part of the Act again
- require you to submit a report that you didn’t give us when you should have.
Remedial directions can be made public. Read remedial directions we’ve issued.
Penalty units
Penalty units are used to calculate fines for breaking Commonwealth laws. Fines are calculated by multiplying the value of one penalty unit by the number of units an offence or civil penalty provision carries.
The value of the penalty unit is set by the date you committed the offence or contravened the civil penalty provision.
| Date of offence or contravention | Penalty unit amount |
|---|---|
| On or after 7 November 2024 | $330 |
| 1 July 2023 to 6 November 2024 | $313 |
| 1 January 2023 to 30 June 2023 | $275 |
| 1 July 2020 to 31 December 2022 | $222 |
| 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2020 | $210 |
| 31 July 2015 to 30 June 2017 | $180 |
| 28 December 2012 to 30 July 2015 | $170 |
| Before 27 December 2012 | $110 |
Written notices
We can issue you with a written notice requiring you to appoint an external auditor to either:
- review your compliance with the Act, the regulations and the AML/CTF Rules, if we have reasonable grounds to suspect you haven’t complied with or are proposing to not comply with AML/CTF law
- undertake an ML/TF risk assessment, where we have reasonable grounds to suspect you haven’t taken – or aren’t taking – appropriate action to identify, assess, mitigate or manage the money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation financing risks (we refer to these as ML/TF risks) you may reasonably face providing designated services.
The notice will let you know:
- what needs to be audited
- the format of the audit report
- the kinds of details the report must include.
Th external auditor must give you a report setting out the result of the audit. You must provide us with a copy of this report.
Learn more about appointing an external auditor.
This guidance sets out how we interpret certain Australian legislation, along with associated Rules and regulations. Australian courts are ultimately responsible for interpreting these laws and determining if any provisions of these laws are contravened.
The examples and scenarios in this guidance are meant to help explain our interpretation of these laws. They’re not exhaustive or meant to cover every possible scenario.
This guidance provides general information and isn't a substitute for legal advice. This guidance avoids legal language wherever possible and it might include generalisations about the application of the law. Some provisions of the law referred to have exceptions or important qualifications. In most cases your particular circumstances must be taken into account when determining how the law applies to you.