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Financial crime task force takes aim at cryptocurrency, pandemic fraud

JUNE 11, 2021

The peak agency looking at financial crime is preparing to crack down on cryptocurrency transactions, to head off their role in tax avoidance while also thwarting efforts by criminals from using digital currency such as bitcoin to bring cash back home.

This Serious Financial Crime Taskforce – which includes the Tax Office and Federal Police — is seeking to head off pandemic stimulus fraud and block attempts by organised crime to repatriate funds to Australia while borders remain closed.

Set up in2015, the SFCT, has been using the army of regulatory and law enforcement resources contributed by its members to chase down white collar criminals in recent years.

Almost 40 people are currently before the courts on charges resulting from SFCT investigations.

While another 50 operations are currently underway, looking into a variety of key areas including the misuse of pandemic stimulus measures, fraud around the early release of superannuation, and attempts to dodge tax or repatriate dark money via cryptocurrency.

About 14 cryptocurrency exchanges were now sharing data with the SFCT.

“It is a big world, obviously there are various forms of exchange of information that’s available for us from tax jurisdiction to tax jurisdiction.” he told The Weekend Australian.

Mr Day said there had been a considerable exchange in data between members of Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement regarding cryptocurrency.

“We’ve got a data matching program that we’ve had in place for a couple of years with digital currency exchanges,”

The moves by the SFCT come as global banking regulators this week firmed up rules around cryptocurrencies.

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision said that the digital currencies posed“ unique risks” to the banking system and proposed banks to hold one US dollar of capital against each dollar of crypto exposure to protect against potential losses from the volatile assets.

Chinese police arrested 1,100 people suspected of trading in cryptocurrencies to launder illegal funds this week.

This move is widely seen as contributing to the hit to the value of bitcoin which is currently trading at $US37,200, well off a peak of more than $US63,000.

www.theaustralian.com.au/business/markets/financial-crime-task-force-takes-aim-at-cryptocurrency-pandemic-fraud/news-story/ebeeb02f314196484e38acafc81114a4