Australia to counter money laundering in cryptocurrency sphere after a huge scandal

The government of Australia announced that it’s going to counter money laundering via new reforms and regulations that will for the first time include digital currencies, Banki.ru reports from Brussels.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the largest in the country, has lately bypassed the regulations on countering criminal money laundering and financing of terrorism, which resulted in a big scandal that stimulated the authorities to invent something new to prevent such events – both embarrassing and dangerous for national security.

Michael Keenan, the Australian Minister of Justice, stated that the new laws will be balanced in order both to upgrade defense against illicit financial activities and to provide a friendly environment for law-abiding financial institutions as well as new Australian entrepreneurs.

Previously it became known to public that five clients of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia were financing terrorism. To do this, they allegedly used the intellectual deposit machines that belong to the bank. The AUSTRAC, a special department that monitors financial transactions, accused the bank of inaction in 54,000 suspicious cases. When this respected financial institution had to alert the law enforcement, it did nothing, more than that, it didn’t send any data about other suspicious transactions totaling to 77 million USD. Furthermore, the bank ATMs were used by the four criminal syndicates that laundered money. They were sending and transferring small sums to avoid suspicions.

The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre also told that one of the operations was linked with drug trafficking and that in the mid-2015, the Commonwealth Bank already knew that those money were illicit and didn’t even block such operations. This activity happened from February 2015 to May 2016, so the bank management certainly had time for this.