I'm currently reading about money laundering facilitated by Australian banks in the book "The Lucky Laundry" by Nathan Lynch.
Here are some recent anti-money laundering law breaches:
* French bank BNP Paribas - fined almost $9 Billion in 2014 [1]
* Commonwealth Bank - fined $700 Million in 2018. [2]
* Westpac fined $1.3 Billion fine in 2020. [3]
It's pretty bad, here are just a couple of examples of the types of things going on.
In the case of Commonwealth Bank they knew people would literally sit outside ATMs stuffing money into machines until they were full, and they didn't do anything about it.
In the case of Westpac, due to their lack of monitoring, essentially helped facilitate child abuse transactions [4].
The banks have also gone out of their way to avoid providing required SWIFT information by routing money around it (counteracting laws put in place to avoid for example transferring money to terrorist orgs).
It doesn't sound like anyone from the banking industry got arrested (surprise surprise).
In the book he also talks about how the Australian Real Estate industry is filled with laundered money and how it is helping to prop up the price of housing in Australia. I'm only halfway through so assume there might be more details on this in the second half of the book.
1) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bnp-paribas-settlement-id...
2) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-04/commonwealth-bank-pay...
3) https://www.bellgully.com/insights/westpac-agrees-to-au-1-3-...
4) https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/21/legal...
Here are some recent anti-money laundering law breaches:
* French bank BNP Paribas - fined almost $9 Billion in 2014 [1]
* Commonwealth Bank - fined $700 Million in 2018. [2]
* Westpac fined $1.3 Billion fine in 2020. [3]
It's pretty bad, here are just a couple of examples of the types of things going on.
In the case of Commonwealth Bank they knew people would literally sit outside ATMs stuffing money into machines until they were full, and they didn't do anything about it.
In the case of Westpac, due to their lack of monitoring, essentially helped facilitate child abuse transactions [4].
The banks have also gone out of their way to avoid providing required SWIFT information by routing money around it (counteracting laws put in place to avoid for example transferring money to terrorist orgs).
It doesn't sound like anyone from the banking industry got arrested (surprise surprise).
In the book he also talks about how the Australian Real Estate industry is filled with laundered money and how it is helping to prop up the price of housing in Australia. I'm only halfway through so assume there might be more details on this in the second half of the book.
1) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bnp-paribas-settlement-id...
2) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-04/commonwealth-bank-pay...
3) https://www.bellgully.com/insights/westpac-agrees-to-au-1-3-...
4) https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/21/legal...