{"id":481388,"date":"2026-06-17T05:35:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T05:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/481388\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T05:35:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T05:35:08","slug":"department-of-internal-affairs-issues-formal-warnings-to-six-auckland-law-firms-in-anti-money-laundering-audit-crackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/481388\/","title":{"rendered":"Department of Internal Affairs issues formal warnings to six Auckland law firms in anti-money laundering audit crackdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThese exist to protect us from financial crime, by helping us spot gaps in the system that could allow dirty money to slip through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olsen said independent audits help the DIA check whether a reporting entity\u2019s AML\/CFT programme actually works and identifies gaps.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany crimes tied to money laundering harm ordinary people. Strong AML\/CFT controls reduce these risks,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The formal warnings were issued to:<\/p>\n

Singhs Lawyers (law firm)Robertsons Associates Limited (law firm)Castleview Law Limited (law firm)FC Law Partners (law firm)Woodroffe Lawyers (law firm)M\u0101ngere Law Limited (law firm)Flexi Online New Zealand Limited (payment provider)Countryman Realty Limited (real estate agency)Cook North & Wong Limited (accounting services provider)Wilton Finance Limited (non-bank, non-deposit-taking lender)<\/p>\n

Govt beefing up anti-money laundering regime<\/p>\n

Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee plans to introduce a bill to Parliament this year<\/a> that would \u201csubstantially increase maximum penalties for serious non-compliance\u201d under the AML\/CFT regime, she says.<\/p>\n

She said penalties were much larger in the likes of Australia, Canada and Britain.<\/p>\n

The paper noted that in 2024, SkyCity New Zealand was fined $4.1 million for breaches comparable to those committed by SkyCity Adelaide, but the Australian casino was fined a whopping A$67m ($80.99m).<\/p>\n

Last week, the High Court ordered ASB to pay a $6.731m penalty \u2013 the equivalent to 0.5% of ASB\u2019s net profit after tax in the last financial year \u2013 for seven breaches of the AML\/CFT Act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThese exist to protect us from financial crime, by helping us spot gaps in the system that could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[16751,3471,228622,51,41666,241994,1558,138,12639,26034,25337,16132,305,78,10118,18087,1452,33186,8307,111,139,83833,69,1118,1523,4739,7563,61,33210],"class_list":["post-481388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-affairs","tag-among","tag-antimoney","tag-auckland","tag-audit","tag-audits","tag-been","tag-business","tag-crackdown","tag-department","tag-firms","tag-formal","tag-have","tag-in","tag-internal","tag-issued","tag-issues","tag-laundering","tag-law","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-noncompliance","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-over","tag-six","tag-those","tag-to","tag-warnings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}