ASB Bank’s parent, Commonwealth Bank faces fines in the billions after admitting to breaching anti-money laundering laws.

The Commonwealth Bank has admitted breaching anti-money laundering legislation thousands of times but is trying to avoid fines that could run into billions of dollars.
 
The bank last night admitted a string of allegations made by the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, the agency charged with tracking illicit financial transactions, relating to the Commonwealth’s network of intelligent deposit machines and how they were used by criminals and potential terrorists to launder tens of millions of dollars.
 
Some of the machines were located in East Perth, with AUSTRAC alleging staff there attempted to alert senior officials about a questionable $30,000 cash deposit made in April 2015.
 
The warning was not acted upon until the middle of June.
 
According to the bank, in its defence submitted to the Federal Court, the CBA was late in filing 53,506 transaction reports to AUSTRAC between 2012 and 2015. The reports, of trans-actions of more than $10,000, must be reported to the agency within 10 days.
 
The CBA has also conceded it “did not adequately” assess the risks posed by the rollout of its new deposit machines, saying it should have introduced daily limits on the machines and the use of certain bank cards through them. Those changes were introduced last month.
 
But it has denied a string of allegations relating to suspicious matter reports and claims it failed to carry out customer due diligence requirements.
 
The bank faces fines of up to $18 million for each of the 53,506 late transaction reports, but it has argued against such a massive impost on what is the nation’s biggest financial institution.
 
It said last night that while mistakes had been made, the bank was already supplying information that had disrupted money laundering and terrorism financing. “We regret any failure to comply with these obligations,” it said.
(via The West Australian)