The Senate Select Committee on Australia as a Technology and Financial Centre has released its final report to widespread praise, though it’s slim pickings for those of us devoted to the fight against financial crime. What little money laundering, etc. meat there is on the bone is nestled mostly in barely 4 pages, starting at page 58.

For me personally, it’s the typo in the first few words of paragraph 3.97 which really epitomises the understanding and diligence of the committee with respect to AML/CFT.

My broad summary & critique below:

1 - Some crypto industry participants fear that adopting the TravelRule makes Australia anticompetitive. This requirement to understand transactions and the parties to them is foundational to AML/CTF. While crypto firms lack even this basic level of understanding of the transfers they enable, we are in deep and hot water indeed, and will remain there until the FATF’s urgent recommendation to adopt the travel rule is acted on. It is fascinating to me that Revolut chose this hill to die on.

2 - AUSTRAC were and are aware that there is a desire for registered cryptocurrency exchanges to be listed on a searchable website, but held off after industry consultation. The primary concern is debanking (which the Senate committee also considers in extremely shallow depth in recommendation 8). It is unclear, and apparently not worth drawing attention to, why Digital Currency Exchanges are granted anonymity while registered remitters are publicly searchable all the while, and face similar issues securing access to banking services.

Link to the full paper is below, and despite the unappealing amlcft aspects, there are some worthwhile recommendations. I would offer a penny for your thoughts, but perhaps a dogecoin is more topical?

1d
Direct link:

https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/pa...

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