The Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Amendment Act 2015 (Act) was passed in November 2015 as part of the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill.
Notable amendments include a new subpart 2A, which will require reporting entities to report “prescribed transactions” to the Police Financial Intelligence Unit under the new sections 48A and 48B.
In the amendment to section 5, prescribed transactions are defined as international wire transfers of $1000 or more or domestic physical cash transactions of $10,000 or more.
Reports will need to include information such as a description of the transaction’s nature, how much money it involved and in what currency, the date it was carried out, and the parties to it.
Both the Act and accompanying regulations (not yet enacted) will come into force in July 2017. The Ministry of Justice aims to have the regulations passed by July 2016, thus leaving reporting entities sufficient time to adapt.