Australian Transaction Reports & Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) has established a new cyber team that will focus on identifying financing activities, money laundering and financial fraud.

The announcement about the new cyber team was made recently by Minister for Justice Malcolm Keenan. He said that the initiative forms part of the Australian Government's Cyber Security Strategy, announced by the Prime Minister in April.

“We know that the national security threat to our nation and globally is unprecedented and modern technologies are presenting new and evolving threats – none more so than from malicious cyber activity”, Keenan said. “The new cyber team will use financial and cyber intelligence to investigate online payment platforms and financial cybercrime to crack down on money-laundering and criminal networks.”

The agency will work with iDcare, Australia and New Zealand's national identity support service, to target job recruitment scams that organised criminal syndicates use to recruit innocent people as money mules. In addition, it will also work with the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN) Joint Management Group (JMG) to identify patterns and trends that could indicate large-scale financial scams or their methodology.

Keenan said that the initiative directly responds to three key recommendations of the Government's Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) Review which was focused on delivering a modern, simplified, streamlined and strengthened AML/CTF regime.

“The Report on the Statutory Review of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing Act 2006 and Associated Rules and Regulations” was tabled in the Australian Parliament by the Minister for Justice on 29 April 2016. It said that although the AML/CTF Act does not currently clearly regulate all types of digital currencies or digital currency businesses, Australia does have oversight of digital currency transactions when digital currency is exchanged for fiat currencies or vice versa, as these transactions generally intersect with the regulated financial sector.

The report highlighted that money laundering and terrorism financing risks posed by digital currencies that arise from peer-to-peer and anonymous nature of such transactions. To that end, it recommended amending the AML/CTF Act to expand the definition of e-currency to include convertible digital currencies not backed by a physical thing; to ensure that digital wallets are comprehensively captured by AML/CTF regulation; and to regulate activities relating to convertible digital currency, particularly activities undertaken by digital currency exchange providers.

Although Keenan did not specifically outline the new cyber intelligence team’s responsibilities with respect to digital currencies, he said that it will “investigate online payment platforms and financial cybercrime”, which may very well include the digital currency industry in Australia.