Australia’s Westpac Bank has negotiated to pay a record USD 0.9 billion fine for the nation’s biggest breach of money laundering laws, according to BBC.
In 2019, Australia’s financial crime watchdog said Westpac bank had failed to adequately report over 19 million international transactions. According to officials, some payments were potentially linked to child exploitation.
Most of the breaches concerned the bank's failure to report international transfers to the regulator, as required by law, in a timely fashion. This amounted to more than AUD 11 billion between 2013 and 2019, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (Austrac) said. It said the bank also failed to retain records and carry out due diligence checks with potentially high-risk overseas banks.
Westpac is the second top Australian bank to pay large fines for breaching anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws. If the billion-dollar fine is approved by a court, it will be the largest civil penalty in Australian corporate history, the online publication added.
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