April 11 2017
Multi-million (and billion) dollar fines for AML/CTF breaches are no longer the preserve of United States and United Kingdom. In this post, we describe the recent ground-breaking action in Australia, as well as recent global trends and the Russian sanctions fiasco.
A$45 million fine for gaming giant
On 16 March 2017, the Federal Court of Australia imposed the highest ever civil penalty in corporate Australian history – a civil penalty of AU$45million was imposed against members of the Tabcorp Group (“Tabcorp”) for non-compliance with the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006.
What went wrong?
Full details are not publicly available, but it is clear that the action involved insufficient suspicious activity reporting to the Australian anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (“AML/CTF”) regular, AUSTRAC.