International Law

The AUSTRAC typologies and case studies report 2010

By David Jacobson

The AUSTRAC typologies and case studies report 2010 has been published.

It includes 31 case studies illustrating how legitimate Australian banking, gambling and remittance services have been misused to commit money laundering and other serious offences. It also lists indicators of potential money laundering/terrorism financing activity.

The report has sections on terrorism financing, current and emerging threats, and suspicious matter reports.

It is a useful training tool.

The analysis of case studies found that money laundering and fraud were equally prevalent, and represented the two most commonly occurring offence types. Fraud and money laundering combined constituted more than half (52 per cent) of all the offences identified in the case studies. The next most commonly identified offences were the importation of drugs (13 per cent), drug trafficking (8 per cent), structuring of financial transactions (8 per cent) and tax evasion (6 per cent).

The three most common types of designated services used to launder the proceeds of crime were account and deposit-taking services (used in 39 per cent of case studies), remittance services (14 per cent) and electronic funds transfers (12 per cent).

Full post as published by Australian Regulatory Compliance Review on June 29, 2010 (boomark / email).