Perhaps he should read this.
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The first one bites the dust.
“Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200 (million)”.
At least they should know Monopoly very well after playing it with other people’s money.
So sad, too bad.
And some more “good news” for the grubby banks.
There was no mention of the penalty but I just saw the jury foreman carrying a large coil of rope.
Like I said previously they say Sorry, they tell us how it will be fixed but none of them take the “falling on their own sword” step that they should be doing. Nor will the Govt through their agencies and their Laws demand any real consequences.
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And another article regarding Worstpac.
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Another article regarding Worstpac’s behaviour.
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Another one bites the dust.
But $2.7 million probably cushioned the fall.
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See how the government reintroduced conscription without anyone noticing?
The ABC going for the “Conroy Play”.
On the ABC World today, they had one of the academics from the University of Technology Sydney on and he explained the challenges all banks have in relation to Austrac suspicious transfer reporting requirements. The used the statement that banks no longer need to know about their customers, but their customer’s customers and their customer’s customer’s customers.
He gave the impression that due to technology advances exploited by criminal groups, just knowing the customer no lomger works and it is often two or three transactions away from the banks initial transaction that the information indicates something suspicious.
I wonder how the banks get information say about all customer’s transactions which may go through another bank/financial institution or two in other countries, which he seemed to indicate may have been the case for the child exploitation transfers alleged by Austrac.
I wonder if Austrac or other government agencies has information not privy to the banks as well…and if this is the case, should Austrac/government be advising the banks of specific customers to watch as well.
The other take home comment was that criminal organisations exploit digital currencies to transfer monies associated with the crime. I wonder if fhe Austrac reporting requiremenfs extend to those organisations responsible for digital currencies as well.
While a mess, it is a very complex and multilayed mess.
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That point is well made, but if you consider credit card fraud monitoring works using a mix of heuristics and history it doesn’t seem a big reach to implement something similar to catch transactions that fit particular patterns, such as repetitive small amounts to particular countries or whatever and flag suspicious accounts for scrutiny.
Since Westpac has been singled out what have the other banks been doing? It must have been something?
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The “good news” just keeps on coming.
So sad, too bad.
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I believe that this is a question that the government should be answering as it applies today. If a person is convicted of drug-related offences, for example, does the government advise the bank of that and require the bank to include that information in its surveillance logic today? Clearly this raises some major privacy issues.
We know that CommBank already got pinged for “53,000 unsurveilled transactions” in a completely different system.
The specific issue for Westpac, according to e.g. https://www.austrac.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-11/20191120%20Westpac%20Statement%20of%20Claim%20FILED%2019008953.pdf (and it doesn’t get more definitive than that as to what the government alleges), is that Westpac established two payment systems
- LitePay - amount limited to $3,000, and
- Australasian Cash Management - amount limited to $100,000,000 (if you can call that a limit
)
neither of which had the government’s required surveillance mechanisms implemented.
23 million transactions through those systems are unable to be shown to have passed surveillance. That does not in any way mean that all 23 million transactions involved serious crimes, or crimes at all.
One relevant question is: was it known outside Westpac that those systems were unsurveilled? If so, then it could easily be that those systems would become a magnet for the sensible criminal, and you could reasonably expect a disproportionate number of dodgy transactions. If not then that consideration does not apply.
Clearly it would be embarrassing for the government if it were known outside Westpac by the sensible criminal but not by the government. Clearly Westpac would not want it known widely outside Westpac (since they would likely have known that they were breaking the law).
In answer to your question, I don’t know whether other banks (NAB, ANZ) were similarly innovative.
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Oh dear. Another day, another disaster for Worstpac.
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Noone see any problems with the government applying extra-judicial punishment?
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Signed, sealed and hopefully delivered.
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Signed the petition in a very faint hope it might just might happen if the wind blows the right way, the rain falls on the drought ridden lands and that we are blessed with all pollies agreeing.
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have now been directly responsible for the facilitation of terrorism, child abuse and other heinous crimes
This is basically BS but never let the truth get in the way of a good petition.
The prosecution won’t have to prove that. The prosecution may not even try to prove that.
The prosecution has to prove that Westpac failed to surveill its customers. That’s all.
The funny thing is that, in this case, a bank is actually doing the right thing by its customers.
Programs are written to a specification
I wondered about that too. You can understand ignorance in some parts of the organisation but it is difficult to see how so many people must have been directly involved in the process of implementation of these two new payment systems without anyone knowing that they were failing in their legal obligations and/or without anyone asking questions.
While the Chairman and CEO have already self-terminated, there must surely be some lower-downs who share responsibility.
petition to Josh Frydenberg (Treasurer)
Completely inappropriate of course. The decision to prosecute (already made) and the process of prosecution are rightly carried out independently of the government of the day. It is a matter for the judicial system.
If the Treasurer involved himself in this case (more than he already has), he would be rightly attacked on the floor of the parliament and outside it.
Do we know whether Westpac is pleading guilty?
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Iceland went the way of jailing the Financial CEOs and Boards for the GFC failures…that was Govt making the Law to allow this. I see no real difference here, we may fine Westpac for the failures but those who oversaw the failures resign perhaps but still in the CEO’s case at least get a payout. Not good enough when they take bonuses because of the performance of the whole organisation, take credit for good results but fail to really pay for the failures. Legislation really does need to be implemented which puts the people in the organisations at real risk of jail and other penalties that fit the crime/failure. None of this it is for the Board to decide what happens stuff we have heard.
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