{"id":3996,"date":"2015-10-04T18:01:36","date_gmt":"2015-10-04T18:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=3996"},"modified":"2015-10-04T18:01:36","modified_gmt":"2015-10-04T18:01:36","slug":"banks-criticized-for-shutting-out-money-remitters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=3996","title":{"rendered":"Banks criticized for shutting out money remitters"},"content":{"rendered":"

A powerful parliamentary committee has slammed the big 4 banks for cutting off services to money remitters, leaving hundreds of legitimate businesses stranded without bank accounts. <\/strong>(<\/strong>Source: News Corp Australia)<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Fearing they wouldn\u2019t be able to comply with strict anti-money-laundering rules both here and overseas, the big four banks dumped, or \u201cde-banked\u201d, an entire sector late last year.<\/p>\n

In a report released last month, the joint committee on law enforcement said a solution was needed that both supported robust anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism finance (AML\/CTF) rules and allowed legitimate remitters to operate.<\/p>\n

However, any solution appears a long way off. A working group of remitters, banks and regulators, chaired by the Attorney-General\u2019s Department, was set up in November last year but has yet to report back.<\/p>\n

The committee\u2019s chairman, NSW Liberal MP Craig Kelly, acknowledged terrorists had used remittance services to finance their activities but said law-abiding operators were being turned into \u201cun-persons\u201d because they could not get a bank account.<\/p>\n

He said banks had legitimate concerns about terror finance but at the same time were knocking out smaller, cheaper, more efficient competitors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are 400 little private guys who have done everything right by the regulations and have built up businesses over the years, who have basically been wiped out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve not only had their business accounts closed down, they\u2019ve also had their private accounts closed down. \u201cThese guys have done nothing wrong, they\u2019re working in a heavily regulated space where they\u2019ve got AUSTRAC and all the compliance conditions.<\/p>\n

Terrorists will\u00a0 find other means to transfer money<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone\u2019s involved in terrorism they\u2019re going to find other ways to transfer money.\u201d An Australian Bankers Association spokeswoman said de-banking was \u201can international issue that requires an international solution\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need a global approach to address the international restrictions that all banks face in serving certain high-risk sectors of the population, including remitters,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Remittance is a major source of money for poorer countries, with Australians sending an estimated USD15.9 billion (AUD23bn) to friends and family overseas in 2014, according to World Bank data.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year Roger Wilkins, the Australian head of global anti-money-laundering body the Financial Action Task Force, said banks should not dump the whole remittance sector. \u201cThe guidance we put out to banks talks about a risk-based approach, which doesn\u2019t mean you find a risk and then automatically in a blunderbuss sort of way de-bank whole sectors or whole countries,\u201d he said in February.<\/p>\n

The joint committee called on the federal government to extend AML\/CTF laws to cover other occupations, including real estate agents and accountants.<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for the A-G\u2019s department said bringing other occupations under the rules was being considered by the review, which \u201cis expected to be completed by late 2015\u201d. \u2014 Source:<\/strong> Ben Butler<\/strong> (The Australian)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A powerful parliamentary committee has slammed the big 4 banks for cutting off services to money remitters, leaving hundreds of legitimate businesses stranded without bank accounts. (Source: News Corp Australia)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,48],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}