Enforcement

Law firm Slater and Gordon has launched class actions against ANZ and Westpac over the sale of consumer credit insurance products, on the heels of winning a near A$50m settlement with NAB.

Listed entities should disclose counterparties’ controllers and beneficial owners in corporate transactions. Asset managers should maintain effective controls to detect dubious arrangements or transactions.

The penalty will be in addition to the A$12mn CommInsure has said it will pay to 30,000 policyholders to remediate telephone sales conduct issues.

Gu Guoming was reportedly found to have been involved in ‘serious corruption’, taking “an extremely large amount” of bribes and using his position to seek benefits for friends and relatives.

Mathew Alwan was permanently banned by ASIC last year and pleaded guilty to ‘intention to defraud’ earlier this year for making false or misleading statements to NAB.

CBIRC spot checks have revealed that small businesses were forced to buy in-house insurance products as conditions for obtaining financing at Beijing branches of the two banks.

According to AUSTRAC's statement of claim, each of the 23 million contraventions attracts a civil penalty between A$17mn and A$21mn.

A settlement clerk siphoned client securities into a private account and sold them over eight years, leaving a $13.8 million hole in R&L Investments’ books.

Regulators and FIs alike have an important part to play to build trust in the financial industry, MAS deputy managing director Ong Chong Tee said in a speech on Saturday.

NAB’s annual report says the bank has reported "a number of" AML/CTF compliance breaches to regulators, the potential outcome and costs of which remain uncertain.