Monday Laundering Facts
In this case a business owner and operator was tracked by Austrac making large sum cash deposits into three banks. The monies being deposited were business proceeds.
AUSTRAC
AUSTRAC (the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre) is Australia’s financial intelligence unit and its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regulator.
It is this regulator’s mandate to use financial intelligence and regulation to:
- prevent criminal abuse of our financial sector;
- help our government and law enforcement partners detect, deter and disrupt money laundering, terrorism financing and other serious crime; and
- build and maintain trust and integrity in Australia’s financial system.
Our Legal Advice
It was clear from the 100s of transactions amounting to some $2m that every dollar deposited could be accounted for in bank statements and deposit slips. There did not appear to be any covering up of the cash which, in our experience at criminal-lawyer-perth occurs when the proceeds are associated with drug dealing or illegal gambling activities. In view of the circumstances of this case we decided to begin negotiations with the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP).
Negotiations with CDPP
The basis of our discussions was that the CDPP could not prove that the cash deposits were the proceeds of illegal activity. The CDPP could however prove that the cash deposits were contrary to legislative and regulatory measures behind AUSTRAC. From the very beginning our client had cooperated with the CDPP proving them with all his banking records. In fact the CDPP acknowledged that the client provided them with records that were largely unobtainable from the banks without considerable effort by the CDPP woking with Australian Federal Police (AFP).
The Result
As a result of criminal-lawyer-perth negotiations with the CDPP our client entered pleas of guilty to regulatory breaches and was given a non-custodial sentence because it could not be shown that the deposited monies were the result of illegal activity. No monies were forfeited.
