AUSTRAC, collaborating with the AFP and the Australian Border Force (ABF), has introduced a new financial crime guide.
This guide is designed to help businesses detect and report suspicious activities related to money mules, specifically focusing on international students and temporary residents.
The AUSTRAC-led Fintel Alliance developed this guide to assist financial service providers in identifying and combating money laundering activities orchestrated by criminal networks. These networks often exploit vulnerable individuals, such as foreign students, to move illicit funds, creating a buffer between themselves and the crime to evade law enforcement.
A money mule is an intermediary used by criminals to transfer illegally obtained funds. This new guide offers profiling and transaction monitoring techniques for financial institutions, highlighting behavioural indicators and methodologies that can signal money mule activities. The guide also stresses the importance of businesses using their own transaction monitoring systems alongside these indicators to report any suspicions to AUSTRAC.
AUSTRAC National Manager, Law Enforcement and Industry, Jon Brewer said, “Criminal networks are constantly looking for ways to clean their dirty money – money obtained as the proceeds of all types of criminal activity including drug and human trafficking, fraud and scams.”
“Through profiling and transaction monitoring, financial service providers can target, detect and report financial transactions associated with money laundering via money mules. This new guide provides the latest advice on what financial institutions should be looking for to help protect vulnerable people from criminal exploitation.”
AFP Detective Superintendent Tim Stainton said, “The money being transferred is often the proceeds of a crime which can then be used by organised crime syndicates to fund other criminal ventures like drug importations, cybercrime, terrorism and human trafficking.”
“In Australia, participating in money muling is a serious criminal offence. If convicted, you can face anywhere from 12 months to life in prison. In addition to engaging in criminal activity, you risk breaching the terms of your bank or financial institution and could lose access to your bank accounts.”
ABF Commander of the Customs Enforcement Branch, John Taylor, said, “We are committed to stopping the movement of illicit money across borders.”
“The financial crime guide identifies how criminal networks exploit vulnerable people such as foreign students as money mules. The guide also provides indicators and behavioural methodologies for our partner agencies and financial service providers to help target and disrupt financial transactions associated with money mule activity.”
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