Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Amendment Act 2015 prescribed transaction reporting regulations

Overview

The purpose of this consultation was to inform the development of regulations for prescribed transaction reporting.

The Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 was amended in November last year as part of the omnibus Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill (the Bill).

A key amendment to the Act is the insertion of subpart 2A, which brings in new requirements for reporting entities to report “prescribed transactions” to the Police Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).

This builds on the Act’s existing “suspicious transaction” reporting requirements and will help mitigate the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing. In particular, the changes will make it more difficult for criminals to use multiple small transactions, multiple senders or multiple recipients to avoid detection.

Prescribed transactions are:

• international wire transfers of $1000 or more
• domestic physical cash transactions of $10,000 or more.

We are seeking feedback on the following issues:

• which fields should be included in prescribed transaction reports?
• when multiple reporting entities are involved in wire transfers, which entity (or entities) should have to submit prescribed transaction reports?

The new legislation, including regulations, will come into force on 1 July 2017. To give reporting entities an adequate lead-in period, the Ministry intends to have the new regulations enacted by July 2016.

The deadline for submissions was 27 May 2016.