The Australian government has introduced the long-anticipated Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financial (AML/CTF) Amendment Bill 2024 into parliament.
According to Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, the amendment bill will bring tranche two entities into the scope, including lawyers, accountants, and real estate agents. It will also bring Australia in line with international standards set by the Financial Action Task Force.
“Australia is now one of only five jurisdictions out of more than 200 that do not regulate these tranche-two entities or ‘gatekeeper’ professions. It means Australia is at serious risk of being ‘grey-listed’ by the FATF, which would not only be damaging to our international reputation but could result in significant economic harm to Australians and businesses,” Dreyfus stated.
Dreyfus believes the amendment bill will also “simplify, clarify and streamline” the AML/CTF regime for businesses.
“This will reduce the regulatory burden on businesses and make it easier to understand and implement effective measures to combat financial crime,” he said.
“The reforms will allow businesses to take a risk-based approach, allowing industry to prioritise their resources. The reforms will also lead to better quality financial data and make it easier for businesses to protect themselves from misuse by criminals.”
These proposed changes will apply to all venues with gaming machines from 31 March 2026.
What incoming changes are expected?
Some specific amendments will include lowering the threshold for requiring identity verification on gaming wins from $10,000 to $5,000.
“The requirements for identifying patrons for large gaming wins are currently set out in the AML/CTF Rules and include risk-based procedures, meaning that, depending on the risk level of the customer – high, medium or low – the procedure used to identify the patron at the gaming cashier changes,” explained Andrew Fernbach, former AUSTRAC legislative counsel and current GOVLAW lawyer.
“For higher risk customers, these changes can involve collecting additional ‘KYC’ or know-your-customer information and/or verifying the information provided by the customer to a higher standard.
“Under the AML/CTF rules, gaming venues must also check whether the patron with a large win is a Politically Exposed Person (PEP) where a customer holds a public office and the role in government carries the risk of bribery or corruption.”
According to Fernbach, the threshold change will pose a significant challenge for venues implementing risk-based ID verification into their cashier processes as it will “increase the frequency of patron wins where the federal ID standard must be applied, over and above State or Territory requirements”.
Get compliant now
Jamie Nettleton, partner of law firm Addisons, flagged that all clubs and pubs – whether metro or regional, big or small – should already be aware of the changes and now is an opportunity to achieve compliance if they haven’t already.
“All venues need to sit up, take notice and be aware that there are now much more prescriptive requirements that are going to apply to them and that they must engage with, otherwise they’ll be deemed to be non-compliant,” he warned.
He highlighted that venues can no longer take a backseat approach to the incoming legislation.
“What we have found is that a lot of the pubs and clubs have a ‘she’ll be right’ attitude, rather than actually engage and say this is important … even though almost all venues are aware that obligations apply,” Nettleton said.
“What we have found is a lot of them have probably had lip service rather than looked at it in any particular detail.”
The good news is that being fully compliant, even now, isn’t that difficult, said Fernbach.
“The AML/CTF Program can help by including easy-to-use forms for gaming staff and guidance on how to implement these risk-based requirements for customer identification for large wins under federal law,” he said.
“AML/CTF training can empower gaming staff and management with the knowledge of money laundering ‘red flags’ and indicators for suspicious matter reporting, helping to inform their understanding of risk.”
Nettleton agreed that staff training will be key, but also cautioned about relying on off-the-shelf products to be complaint.
“Don’t rely on the off-the-shelf product, which you may have obtained some years ago and assume that’s going to give you the pass ticket – it won’t,” he said.
This piece was first published by our sister publication, Club Management.