AUSTRAC’s Fintel Alliance has released a financial crime guide to help remittance service providers, banking and financial services businesses detect and report cuckoo smurfing.
Organised criminals use ‘cuckoo smurfing’ as a method of laundering money to disguise and integrate their funds across borders to profit from and further enable their illegal activities.
Digital currencies, also known as virtual assets, are dynamic and rapidly evolving. In 2018, AUSTRAC began regulating digital currency exchanges, also known as virtual asset providers, for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) purposes. Since then, there’s been significant growth in digital currencies and investment in meeting AML/CTF regulation.
A money laundering and terrorism financing (ML/TF) risk assessment, released today, shows a medium level of ML/TF risk to Australia’s non-bank lending and financing sector.
The risk assessment finds that the non-bank lending and financing sector has a medium level of vulnerability to financial crime, with the overall money laundering and terrorism financing risk assessed as medium.
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) will be migrating to the ISO 20022 message standard for cross-border and correspondent banking payments (i.e. international funds transfers). This will start in November 2022 with full implementation by 2025.
From 17 June 2021, reforms to the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (AML/CTF Act) came into effect that will streamline your compliance and help you protect your business from the harms of money laundering, terrorism financing and other serious crimes.
AUSTRAC will be undertaking a systems transformation program over the next four years to transform the way you interact and report to AUSTRAC.
The system transformation program will replace AUSTRAC Online. The new system will be modern and user-friendly, with improved reporting capability and self-service options to help you meet your regulatory obligations.
AUSTRAC has released a new financial crime guide to warn businesses and their customers about the dangers of a money laundering method known as ‘cuckoo smurfing’.
AUSTRAC has issued a remedial direction to Australian Military Bank Ltd (AMB) requiring the mutual bank to review and uplift its compliance with Australia’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) laws.
The action follows ongoing regulatory engagement with AMB which identified concerns related to the effectiveness of AMB’s AML/CTF systems and controls.
This is a joint media release between the Australian Federal Police, Queensland Police Service, Australian Border Force, Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, AUSTRAC and National Police of the Netherlands.
AUSTRAC has just released a suite of educational resources, with real-life examples, on how to submit more effective suspicious matter reports (SMRs).