Money-laundering bill finally back in Parliament despite fight by Law Council, property lobby

“That Australia has become a sink for the illicit wealth of some of the Pacific region’s worst kleptocrats should horrify all Australians.”

So says Nathan Lynch, a financial crime intelligence expert at Thomson Reuters. Financial crime is a “global catastrophe”, he says, with some $2 trillion a year being laundered, of which only 1% is detected.

For more than a decade, Australia has refused to sign up to anti-money laundering provisions, despite repeated promises from government ministers that it was about to do so.

Australia thus joins the illustrious company of China, Mongolia, Madagascar, Mauritius and the United States in being the only six countries in the world that are not complying with global rules on Anti-Money…