Drug syndicates and gun dealers used the Commonwealth Bank’s intelligent ATMs to launder millions of dollars for years.
Australia’s largest bank admits its failures prevented police disrupting money laundering by the crime syndicates.
CBA agreed to a $700 million civil penalty, the largest in Australian corporate history, to settle its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) case with AUSTRAC in June.
The banking royal commission heard CBA knew it had issues with its AML/CTF obligations years before the government financial intelligence agency launched the civil action in 2017.
CBA CEO Matt Comyn said a number of the failings outlined in AUSTRAC’s statement of claim came as a complete surprise to the bank.
He agreed the contraventions were extremely serious.
“Certainly our failures contributed to the inability to provide law enforcement with necessary intelligence that would have led to earlier prosecutions,” he said on Tuesday.
“And, of course, there could have been other matters as well because we didn’t appropriately manage all of the risks associated with our AML/CTF obligations.”
The issues centred on CBA’s intelligent deposit machines – ATMs where deposits were…
