The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has issued a formal warning to the New Zealand branch of Westpac Banking Corporation (WBC) for AML/CFT violations. Specifically, the WBC failed to report particular transactions as obligated by New Zealand’s AML/CFT Act of 2009.
Under the AML/CFT Act, reporting entities must report prescribed transactions to the Financial Intelligence Unit. Prescribed transactions include large value transactions such as international wire transfers of $1,000 or more.
WBC’s prescribed transaction reporting (PTR) systems could not detect and report all such international transactions. This led to non-reporting of as many as 8000 international corporate transactions between July 2018 and February 2019.
Source: Reserve Bank of New Zealand