We are pleased to advise that the product currently known as Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing in Australia will soon have its content expanded to address financial crime and will be republished as Financial Crime Control and Anti-Money Laundering.

The work has been in the process of being significantly updated over the past 12 months by our newly commissioned author Dr Mathew Leighton-Daly. Mathew is an internationally recognised specialist in financial crime control; however, his achievements include working as a cross-disciplinary consultant and researcher specialising in business (especially asset protection) and compliance (especially financial crime control) and risk. He is also a PhD scholar (ATAX UNSW) and lecturer (School of Law, University of Wollongong). Formerly, Mathew practiced as a NSW barrister (specialising in revenue and financial crime), an ASIC Lawyer (Enforcement) and a NSW Police Force prosecutor.

As Mathew explains in his opening comments:

Criminals are using increasingly sophisticated and novel methods to commit financial crimes.

Financial institutions are perhaps the most vulnerable due to their core businesses, volume of transactions and client relationships. However, all persons and organisations are potentially at risk.

The control of financial crime may be divided loosely into two areas:

1. controlling fraud and corruption within or by an organisation; and
2. compliance with anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism obligations.

The difference between 1 and 2 (although they overlap), is that controlling fraud and corruption is concerned with preventing an entity from being defrauded from persons either internal or external to the entity (and also includes manipulating an entity to target external parties), whereas compliance with anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism obligations is concerned with entities preventing themselves from being used to facilitate money laundering and/or terrorism financing.

Accordingly, it was Mathew's view, shared by the Publisher, that domestic AML responses (driven by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)) include the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth) (AML/CTF Act) and Rules but also various other Acts or parts of Acts in relation to criminal money laundering and civil proceeds of crime legislation. Therefore, in addition to extensively amended annotations to the AML/CTF Act, the work will now cover:

1. context and overview;
2. money-laundering and terrorism financing offences;
3. provisional measures and confiscation; and
4. measures by Entities.

In due course, the author will include annotations to the Financial Transaction Reports Act 1988 (Cth) as well as keeping subscribers constantly abreast of litigation and legislation and regulatory changes in this dynamic area of the law.