Australia Removes 45 Remittance and Crypto Firms From AML Registers

Australia’s financial crime regulator AUSTRAC has cancelled, suspended or refused to renew the registrations of 45 remittance and virtual asset service providers over the past year, removing the businesses from its registers.

AUSTRAC said the actions targeted businesses that were dormant or inactive, insolvent, lacked the capacity to trade, held the wrong registration, failed to report material changes, or otherwise carried significant money laundering or terrorism financing risk. 

“The rapid movement of money across borders can create some of the highest ML/TF risks”, chief executive Brendan Thomas said.

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The GetCoins Case

One cancellation targeted BA Digital Ventures, trading as GetCoins, which AUSTRAC acted against with the National Anti-Scam Centre after customer complaints. The regulator requested information on the firm’s operations to assess whether it could manage its money laundering risks. 

“This VASP was allegedly exploited by organised cryptocurrency investment scams”, Thomas said, adding that cancelling GetCoins’ registration “helped to disrupt organised investment scam activity”.

AUSTRAC has stepped up the same scrutiny across the wider sector, opening an investigation into Western Union and moving to suspend Cryptolink’s crypto ATM network, part of a crackdown on ATMs used to launder money and run scams. 

A Regime Under Overhaul

The removals follow AUSTRAC’s annual risk update and land as Australia’s rewritten anti-money-laundering rules take hold. 

Obligations under the reformed AML/CTF Act began applying to existing reporting entities in March, newly regulated firms were brought in from July, and existing digital currency exchanges rolled automatically into the virtual asset category. 

AUSTRAC has already put dozens of firms on notice over reporting failures and warned idle operators to use their registration or lose it.

Thomas said AUSTRAC would keep removing firms that pose a significant money laundering or terrorism financing risk.

“Businesses with cancelled registrations can no longer operate and where appropriate, we’ve referred individuals behind these businesses to law enforcement and regulatory partners locally and overseas”, he said. 

He warned the rest of the industry to “understand and manage your risks and meet your reporting obligations, or you may not be able to continue operating”.

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