Austrac canned on bank charges

FINANCIAL crimes watchdog Austrac has been labelled as “hopeless” after a series of missteps and its legal action against Westpac alleging it breached anti-money laundering laws 23 million times and gave a free pass to 12 bank customers potentially committing child sex crimes, resulted in just one person being charged.

The revelation of the single charge comes six months after Austrac referred the customers to the Australian Federal Police to investigate, and as the case against the bank, which self-reported the breaches, heads back to court this week.

News Corp can reveal two of the 12 bank customers outed by Austrac have been cleared of any wrongdoing.

But questions have been raised about what has happened to the remaining nine – whether they were also innocent of any wrong doing?

Or had they been tipped off in time by Austrac’s public revelations to destroy evidence or skip the country.

Austrac has refused to comment on the Westpac case saying it is not “appropriate” while it is before the courts.

Dr Ron Pol, a lawyer and anti-money laundering expert, said the breathless reporting surrounding the “clickbait of 23 million breaches” failed to consider how Austrac had in the first place “overlooked a glaring gap in the number of reports it should have received” from Westpac Bank.

Dr Pol said it was symptomatic of a compliance culture which measures activity rather than results and the “less exciting truth” is that Austrac’s claim against the bank lists less than a dozen types of breach.

But the watchdog is facing mounting criticisms about its seeming failures to act on suspicious matter reports ranging from millions of dollars in an alleged gold refinery money laundering scam, to video evidence of a shopping bag full of money allegedly being laun

THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT AUSTRAC IS USELESS. “IT NEEDS TO BE EITHER REPLACED OR GENUINELY FIXED

dered at Crown casino, and a failure to efficiently oversee Clubs NSW.

Independent Federal MP Andrew Wilkie said “in my experience Austrac’s conduct has been hopeless.”

“On a number of occasions I have provided Austrac with hard evidence of money laundering and other criminal activities, and every time they have ignored the evidence or obfuscated with bureaucratic gobbledygook.”

“The bottom

Austrac is useless.

“It needs to be either replaced or genuinely fixed, because right now it gives Australians a false sense of security.” line is that