MILLIONS of dollars in suspicious financial transactions, including some linked to child exploitation and drug dealing, have been reported under new anti-money laundering laws.

But police still cannot point to the number of arrests made or prosecutions launched as a result of the restrictive new regime installed in June 2013, or say how many of those reported as suspicious required more investigation.

In the first year of the Anti-Money-Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act being fully enacted, placing increased onus on banks and other financial institutions to detect suspicious transactions, almost 87,000 transactions worth $3.5 billion were reported to police.

In the previous year, before the law was passed, almost 12,000, worth $545 million, were reported.

Information released by police under the Official Information Act shows the suspicious transaction reports had “detected or contributed to [the] investigation of crimes including money laundering, drug dealing. large scale transnational fraud, abuse of trusts and companies and payments suspected to relate to child exploitation.

The size of the suspicious transactions reported in 2013-14 ranged from small sums to millions of dollars, averaging out at $40,400 a transaction. [Read more…]