The penalty was the biggest in Australian corporate history, and almost double the previous record - a $700 million fine paid by the Commonwealth Bank for nearly 54,000 money-laundering breaches. Some of the transfers in question were linked to alleged child exploitation activities in South-East Asia. It will be alleged in court the syndicate laundered $150 million in its own profits, gained from the movement of cash between 20.Īside from a large collection of luxury goods and cars, it parked the allegedly illicit funds in a prized property portfolio, including 20 addresses across Sydney - with two homes in the eastern suburbs worth a combined $19 million alone - and a $47 million block of land near the future Western Sydney Airport. In this case, the police allege the syndicate used 'multiple jurisdictions by multiple means', including exploiting daigous (essentially, border-hopping shoppers), casino junkets and an informal transfer system outside of conventional banking. Money laundering describes the 'washing' of cash so that money made by criminal means ends up looking like legitimate profits. The AFP allege the syndicate acted as an unregulated multi-national bank, drawing on cash reserves in multiple countries around the world and facilitating transactions for criminal clients. This week federal police arrested nine people and seized millions of dollars' worth of Sydney homes, cryptocurrency and luxury items, crushing a syndicate it is alleging offered money laundering at an 'industrial scale'.

This is what the Australian Federal Police allege had been going on for years, casting a fresh spotlight on a potential gaping hole in Australia's anti-money-laundering monitoring - real estate agents, lawyers and accountants, none of whom are obliged to report suspicious transactions.

That's a good reason why criminals might avoid dealing with any of them and instead turn to an illegal multi-national 'bank' to launder their dirty money around the globe and through investing in Australian real estate.

There's an A-focused alphabet soup of regulators to satisfy – ASIC, APRA, ACCC, AUSTRAC – oversight bodies like AFCA and BCCC, and then pesky journalists writing about when things don't go well. As financial sector lobby groups frequently note, the banking industry is highly regulated.

Bust bank western