Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has said real estate was the main asset used by money laundering criminals in Australia in recent years.
Speaking at the National Press Club of Australia on July 9, Mr. Dreyfus shared his insights on the magnitude of money laundering crime nationwide.
“Australia is at serious risk of exploitation by criminals seeking to launder illicit funds,” he said.
“Over the past four years, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions has secured more than 240 convictions for money laundering offences.”
According to the attorney-general, the Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce, led by the Australian Federal Police, seized around $352 million (US$237 million) worth of assets from money laundering criminals in 2023.
This was $214 million more than the previous year.
Mr. Dreyfus noted a concerning trend of criminal syndicates using real estate as a medium for money laundering.
“Real estate accounted for 65 percent of those assets. This is a concerning statistic, but it’s not surprising,” he said.
“We know the laundering of large and illicit sums through real estate, both residential and commercial, is an established money laundering method in Australia.
“These criminals are constantly looking for new ways to exploit our systems and launder the proceeds of their crime through Australian real estate and our economy more generally.”
Apart from real estate, Mr. Dreyfus said criminals used other established and legal channels such as cash, luxury goods, domestic banks, casinos, and remittance services to launder funds in Australia.
While acknowledging that a large amount of illegal funds were laundered via real estate each year, the attorney-general said there was no evidence that money laundering was behind rising property prices.
Drug Offences Are the Largest Source of Money Laundered in Australia
Meanwhile, Brendan Thomas, the CEO of the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, an anti-money laundering intelligence agency, said drug offences were the single largest source of laundered money in the country.“The value of the Australian domestic drug market is at least $12.4 billion a year,” he said.
“All that needs to be laundered through the Australian economy every year. And that’s one single type of crime.”
Mr. Thomas also raised concerns about the links between Australia’s illicit drug markets and criminal markets and organisations operating in Asia, which further exacerbate money laundering risks in the country.
“These include large and highly functional international drug trafficking organisations that control supply chains into Australia, as well as highly organised and sophisticated professional international money laundering organisations that have a demonstrated capacity to launder funds into and out of Australia,” he said.
Other major sources of money laundered were tax and revenue crimes, government-funded program fraud, proceeds of illicit tobacco sales and the global proceeds of scams.
“Fraud against the Australian taxation system is a significant source of laundered funds in Australia,” Mr. Thomas said.
“We estimated that tax fraud could increase to over a billion dollars annually.”
