Business
08:25, 14-Aug-2017
Chief of Australia’s biggest bank to retire amid laundering scandal
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The chief executive of Australia's biggest bank, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, will retire by the end of 2018 financial year, the company said Monday, amid pressure from regulators over alleged breaches of money laundering and terrorism financing laws.
The bank's chair Catherine Livingstone said in an online statement that Ian Narev’s exact retiring time depends on the outcome of an ongoing internal and external search process.
The board of bank will provide details of its planned chief executive succession process to ensure “certainty for the business,” the statement said.
Narev faced calls to step down last week after the financial intelligence agency Australian Transactions Reports & Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) launched a civil action against the bank alleging "serious and systemic non-compliance" of the laws on 53,700 occasions.
AUSTRAC alleged that the suspected money laundering was conducted through the bank’s accounts by way of cash deposits, many through intelligent deposit machines, followed immediately by international and domestic transfers, and the bank failed to report these suspicious cash transactions in time for assessment as anti-money laundering laws required, ABC reported on August 3.
The maximum penalty for each of the contraventions can be up to 18 million Australian dollars, the report said.
Source(s): AFP