Money laundering and terrorism financing survey results
An Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre survey has found most respondents believe they could identify suspicious activity.
The government organisation AUSTRAC canvassed 33 companies engaged in overseas trade in the securities or derivatives sector for their responses to 14 ‘red flags’ or suspicious behaviours in business partners who might be involved in money laundering or terrorism financing.
Sixty percent of respondants said their organisation would identify 13 to 14 of the listed categories as suspicious, especially where there was doubt about a customer’s identity or a country subject to sanctions or a tax haven was involved.
Most said they would be reliant on staff interaction with the customer to provide this information and 61 percent reported encountering at least one potentially suspicious matter in the first six months of 2010.
The ‘red flags’ are, in order of suspicion:
Doubts about customer’s identity
Unusual questions about the companies anti money laundering and counter terrrorism funding policies
Customer from a country of interest
Customer matches a name on Australia’s Consolidated List of subjects of terrorist assset freezing controls
Transactions involving a country of interest
Customer can’t identify source of funds
Customer requests multiple trading accounts
Unexplained third party involvement
Unusual use of trading accounts
One-off patterns of trading
Lack of knowledge of securities and derivatives related to their order
An unusually complex corporate or trust structure
Frequent trading activity with minimal movement of funds
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