Australia's New Anti-Money Laundering Strategy

Abstract

In 2006 the Australian Government undertook major reform of the regulatory framework to detect, prevent and prosecute money laundering. These reforms were responses to the changing nature of money laundering as well as the limitations inherent in the existing compliance or rule-based regulatory approach. Originally intended to deal with the laundering of cash generated mainly by drug trafficking, contemporary anti-money laundering systems must now deal with a range of ‘public bads’, including organised fraud, the financing of terrorism, corruption and the theft of state assets, and the financial weaknesses of ‘failed states’. Existing regulatory systems have generated unwieldy volumes of def..