The Wall Street Journal | By: Robb M. Stewart | Aug. 3, 2017:
Australia’s financial-intelligence agency accused the nation’s biggest bank of failings it said may have opened the way for money laundering and financial crime.
In a civil suit filed Thursday in the federal court in Sydney, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre alleged that Commonwealth Bank of Australia Ltd. contravened the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act more than 53,700 times—each carrying a maximum penalty of 18 million Australian dollars (US$14.3 million).
Nearly all the alleged violations were failures to make timely reports to Austrac of cash transactions of A$10,000 or more, as the law requires.
The bank, Australia’s largest by loan volume and market value, acknowledged the lawsuit and said it would comment on the specific claims in due course.
In its court filing, the agency, known as Austrac, said the bank rolled out “intelligent deposit machines,” a type of ATM that accepts deposits of cash and checks, in 2012 but didn’t assess the money-laundering and terrorism-financing risk until mid-2015.
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