Tuesday 17 July 2018

Austrac v CBA - opportunity lost




Austrac's $700 million fine against CBA in the money laundering case may sound impressive but in reality it's an opportunity lost.  Austrac should have hung in there for a $1 billion plus penalty. After all, CBA failed to report 53,500 illegal transactions through its IDMs (Immediate Deposit Machines) of $10,000 or more, totalling $625 million, plus a further $77 million of suspicious transactions.  
In other words, CBA is paying approximately $13,000 per breach in relation to conduct which is subject to a maximum penalty of $21 million per breach. By my calculations that means the fine is actually only 0.06% of the maximum fine which could have been imposed. I also reckon Tabcorp must be feeling a bit hard done by at the moment after agreeing to pay a fine of $45 million back in March 2017 for a "measly" 108 breaches of the same legislation, which equates to $416,000 per breach!

https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/cba-reaches-700m-settlement-over-austrac-allegations-20180604-p4zj9p.html

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