The International Financial Task Force has released a report evaluating Australia’s progress on implementing international anti-money laundering rules. It shows that Australia has gaps in its system and is not fully implementing the recommendations.
Some of the findings:
While narcotics offences provide a substantial source of proceeds of crime, the majority of illegal proceeds are derived from fraud-related offences. One Australian Government estimate suggested that the amount of money laundering in Australia ranges between AUD 2—3 billion per year…
Criminals use a range of techniques to launder money in Australia. Generally, money launderers seek to exploit the services offered by mainstream retail banking and larger financial service and gaming providers. Visible money laundering is predominantly carried out using the regulated financial sector, particularly through the use of false identities and false name bank accounts facilitated by forged documents to structure and transact funds. Money launderers often move funds offshore by using international funds transfers. Money launderers also move funds through smaller or informal service providers such as alternative remittance dealers. Australian authorities also identified other methods that served as money laundering vehicles: cash smuggling into and out of Australia, and the use of legitimate businesses to mix proceeds of crime with legitimately earned income/profits. Law enforcement has also recognised a growing trend in the use of professional launderers and other third parties to launder criminal proceeds…
Australia generally pursues money laundering via proceeds of crime action using the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA); however, the key issue in terms of effective implementation of the money laundering offence is the low number of money laundering prosecutions at the Commonwealth level (ten dealt with summarily and three on indictment since 2003, with five convictions), indicating that the regime is not being effectively implemented. Money laundering is also criminalised at the State and Territory level, and these offences vary in comprehensiveness. The lack of statistics on State and Territory prosecutions and convictions for ML prevents an evaluation of their effectiveness…
The Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism Act 2002 (SoFTA), which came into force in July 2002, amended a number of existing Acts to implement Australia’s obligations under the UN Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism Convention and relevant UN Security Council Resolutions. As amended, the Criminal Code Act 1995 now contains several offences related to the financing of terrorism: receiving funds from or making funds available to a terrorist organisation; providing or collecting funds to facilitate a terrorist act. While broadly satisfactory, this offence does not specifically cover the collection of funds for a terrorist organisation or provision/collection of funds for an individual terrorist. This should be rectified. There have not been any prosecutions for terrorist financing.
