Did the Financial Action Task Force halt its AML reviews to spare the Australian government another black mark?

The international Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has suspended its evaluation of Australia’s anti-money laundering (ALM) laws, which some suspect was motivated with an ambition to save country’s government more embarrassment.

The G7 body was originally set to release a report about how Australia is dealing with financial crimes. The new review was expected to deliver another embarrassing black mark to the Morrison government over its failure to enact new regulations that would force law firms, accountants and real estate agents to report suspicious transactions.

Law firms and real estate organizations have lobbied hard to avoid any tightening of AML laws.

However, the authority is undergoing a strategic review of its own effectiveness and has therefore said it is suspending the review.

The halted investigation into Australia’s AML achievements will be discussed at a meeting in February 2020, according to the Financial Review.

However, some experts suggest that suspending the review was motivated by a desire to spare the country’s government another black spot over its inaction to prevent money laundering.

“The rest of the world is scratching its head over Australia’s policy inaction. We’ve gone from a leader to laggard in the space of a decade,” Nathan Lynch, a financial crime intelligence expert at Thomson Reuters, told Financial Review. “The local financial intelligence community is at a loss. It’s really staggering.”

A spokesperson from FATF denied that this was the case, saying that all scheduled ongoing follow-up assessment had been suspended, not just the one devoted to Australia’s AML action.

A FATF report from 2018 had found that Oz was either non-compliant or only partially compliant with 14 out of 40 recommendations that the FATF had made.

An Australian Home Affairs spokesperson told the Financial Review that the current Morrison government was “committed to continually improving Australia’s anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing” laws and that it is working with the “industry to ensure that Australia’s financial system is hardened against criminals and terrorists without placing undue burden on industry.”

The news comes in the same week as Westpac, one of Australia’s biggest banks, was accused by the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) of breaking the nation’s AML and counter-terrorism funding laws 23 million times between 2013 and 2018.

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