BNZ has received a formal warning from the Reserve Bank for breaching anti-money laundering law.
The breaches involved more than 50,000 domestic cash transactions (actual folding money) handled by BNZ between November 2018 and April 2020.
According to the Reserve Bank, BNZ failed to report the correct location for the transactions in the prescribed transactions reports (PTRs) it was required to send to the Police Financial Intelligence Unit, breaching its responsibilities under the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act (AML/CFT Act).
BNZ identified the cause of the breach as a coding error in its computer processing system.
"BNZ promptly remediated the matter and has fully co-operated with the Reserve Bank during the investigation," Reserve Bank Deputy Governor Christian Hawkesby said.
"The PTR regime is important for building an intelligence picture across New Zealand's financial system.
"Unfortunately, these coding errors compromised the quality of information held by the Financial Intelligence Unit.
"We note that BNZ self-reported this issue to us and has worked hard to remediate the issue and provide the Financial Intelligence Unit with the corrected information," Hawkesby said.
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7 Comments
The AML rules are nonsense foisted on NZ by the USA after the Panama papers came out. Everything should be run through RealMe instead of this plethora of opportunistic CRMS and identity verification services. It's created another cost-layer overnight.
No government agency wants to buy into using real me because it has a real cost they have to cover through baselines.
The AML Act in NZ was enacted in 2009. The Panama Papers leaks started in 2016...
So what actually happens when the Police receive these reports - presumably thousands or hundreds of thousands a year
Like the identity reporting and recording when you now interact with a law firm it looks a lot like keeping track of the innocent and being overwhelmed with data so no time to chase the crims
And how much has crime fallen since AML initiated?
Why are RBNZ not being held responsible for the lack of any measurable reduction in money laundering and therefore crime. They are the regulator and have made the rules.
Laws are there to deter and penalize actions, they don't prevent people from breaking the laws.
Are we not seeing a measurable reduction because we're actually measuring?
Are there consequences to defeating the ends of justice or are we old-boys-clubbing this one?
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