AUSTRAC v Tabcorp: A case study in enforcement action by Australia’s financial crime regulator

Ben Scott
Additional contact information
Ben Scott: Senior Manager of Sanctions and Financial Crime Compliance Risk Management, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Australia

Journal of Financial Compliance, 2018, vol. 1, issue 4, 373-380

Abstract: The Australian case Chief Executive of the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre v Tabcorp (AUSTRAC v Tabcorp), which settled in 2017, was an important case in Australian regulatory history. At the time AUSTRAC v Tabcorp commenced, it was highly unusual for Australia’s financial crime regulator, AUSTRAC, to take major reporting entities to court over breaches of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) legislation. This paper uses AUSTRAC v Tabcorp as a case study through which to examine how Australian reporting entities investigate and report on financial crime activity, and AUSTRAC’s expectations of AML/CTF programmes. The paper explains the background and context to AUSTRAC v Tabcorp, describes the main financial crime issues identified in AUSTRAC’s pleadings, summarises the key legal issues in the judgment and analyses the significance of AUSTRAC v Tabcorp from a financial crime risk perspective. Australia’s financial crime compliance framework is the subject of extensive analysis by industry and government bodies; however, the underlying criminal activity which the framework is designed to prevent is less well understood. This paper addresses both the legal issues raised by AUSTRAC v Tabcorp, and the financial crime activity disclosed in AUSTRAC’s pleadings. In this way, it provides a practical understanding of Australian financial crime compliance obligations, and the real-world consequences when these obligations are not met.

Keywords: money laundering; compliance; fraud; litigation; gambling; financial crime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E5 G2 K2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hstalks.com/article/3892/download/ (application/pdf)
https://hstalks.com/article/3892/ (text/html)
Requires a paid subscription for full access.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aza:jfc000:y:2018:v:1:i:4:p:373-380

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Financial Compliance from Henry Stewart Publications
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Henry Stewart Talks ().