Author: Viktor H
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If It Can Get a Home Loan, It Can Pass Your CDD — AI Document Fraud & AML Risk
Commonwealth Bank invested $900 million in fraud protections last financial year. It still ended up with a suspected $1 billion problem in its loan book. The bank self-referred to police and ASIC after uncovering potentially doctored home loan applications — including documents generated by artificial intelligence. It followed an earlier alleged fraud at NAB, and Read more
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31 March 2026: What’s Transitional, What’s Not, and Why the Distinction Will Catch People Out
The three-year grace period for initial CDD made headlines across the Australian compliance community. What didn’t make headlines is everything that has no grace period at all. On 31 March 2026 — now just weeks away — Australia’s reformed AML/CTF Act takes effect for existing reporting entities. The transitional rules announced by AUSTRAC and the Read more
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Swedbank’s Fresh AML Probe: What Happens When Remediation Doesn’t Stick
By Viktor Ha | February 2026 | AML-CAMS Blog A record SEK 4 billion fine. An internal investigation spanning 12 years. Remediation programs across four countries. A former CEO prosecuted. And on 20 February 2026 — just last week — Sweden’s Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen, or FI) announced it will investigate whether Swedbank’s customer due Read more
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Bendigo Bank’s $50M Capital Add-On: Analyzing the APRA & AUSTRAC Joint Enforcement
By Viktor Ha | February 2026 | AML-CAMS Blog When APRA and AUSTRAC jointly announced enforcement action against Bendigo and Adelaide Bank on 17 December 2025, the headline number was AUD 50 million — an operational risk capital add-on that landed effective 1 January 2026. But the number is not the story. The story is Read more
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Deutsche Bank, Jeffrey Epstein, and the AML Failures That Led to a $150 Million Fine
In July 2020, New York regulators delivered a blunt message to one of the world’s biggest banks. Deutsche Bank AML failures had reached a point where enforcement was unavoidable. The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) imposed a $150 million civil penalty, citing years of weak controls tied most visibly to the bank’s Read more
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The “Tranche 2” Revolution: Why Real Estate Agents and Lawyers Are the New Front Line in AML
For nearly two decades, the Australian anti-money laundering landscape has been dominated by one group: the banks. If you worked in a financial institution, you lived and breathed the AML/CTF Act 2006. If you were a lawyer, accountant, or real estate agent, you were largely on the outside looking in. That era is over. Come Read more
