No way you have to read the statement of claim put forward by Austrac and compare this to Justice Nye Perren's Judgment a couple of weeks ago on TABCORP. TABCORP had 170 cases and this was just for 13 individuals. Justice Perren reduced the find down because TABCORP admitted error and made the adjustments.
You just read each individual case and realise the excuse it was one coding error is total BS.
It is well documented that even when CBA were told over the 3 year period that they were breaching AML they did nothing and swept it under the carpet. Some of those individuals were in jail and the bank accounts stayed open for 30 days as money went flying across the Pacific offshore.
Nathan Lynch from Reuters is one of the best in the business on AML
The defence they file on Friday will be where the foreign regulators will announce their own formal probes.
This is a short term short.
If the fine is what is normally done for other large offshore banks around US$2-3bn then CBA can handle this by cutting its dividend or doing a capital raising. The largest fine is US$9bn to BNP Paribas and average at US$1.9bn with a total of US$180bn in fines from the foreign regulators on foreign banks.
CBA will get their medicine on this massive screw up and in some ways with the board cuts and CEO getting sacked, resigning it has already started.
CBA Price at posting:
$80.36 Sentiment: Sell Disclosure: Held
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