Australia’s money laundering scandals

A deep dive into the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s failures that resulted in massive AML breaches

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), one of the nation’s largest and most prestigious financial institutions, was found to have failed in its duty to prevent money laundering on an enormous scale. The bank, which has extensive operations throughout Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, was exposed for neglecting to report over 53,000 suspicious transactions, totalling a staggering $624 million.

The problem is that Australia is one of only five countries to exempt lawyers, accountants and real estate from anti-money laundering (AML) rules. But a series of money laundering scandals has undermined international confidence in Australian AML efforts.

The Australian government has committed to change this, expanding AML/CTF obligations to an additional 100,000 ‘Tranche-2’ entities in Australia, while modernising the AML regime. As Australia prepares for a new dawn in AML, it is prepared to move on from the AML mistakes of the past.

We take a look at these scandals, explore what went wrong, including the systemic failures, and explain how companies can mitigate their risks of getting embroiled in a financial scandal.

Download Australia’s money laundering scandals

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GDPR added a significant compliance burden on DPOs and data processors. Data breaches must be reported to the authorities within 72 hours, each new data processing activity needs to be documented and Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIA) must be carried out for processing that is likely to result in a high risk to individuals. Penalties for breaching GDPR can reach into the tens of millions of Euros.

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