A crackdown on money laundering means real estate agents, lawyers and accountants will need to report suspicious transactions. It could take heat out of the property market, which regulators say is used to wash billions of dollars of dirty money from criminals and corrupt foreign officials.
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00:00 People in anti-corruption bodies and around the world have been pushing for Australia
00:05 to have these laws for several decades.
00:08 They're called Trench 2.
00:09 And what they would do is they would mean that real estate agents, accountants, lawyers
00:14 and dealers in precious gems and stones would essentially be subject to laws that try to
00:18 stop money laundering.
00:20 It forces them to essentially ask about where funds have come from and do a little bit of
00:25 due diligence, that is checks on things.
00:27 It will pretty much end the practice of people turning up with a suitcase of cash to buy
00:32 real estate, something that has plagued Australia because we haven't had these laws and we've
00:37 been in some pretty grim company, just one of five nations around the world that hasn't
00:43 signed up to these Trench 2 laws.
00:44 Speaking to Anti-Corruption Body Transparency International Australia, this is what the
00:49 CEO Clancy Moore had to say.
00:51 For far too long, Australia has been a very attractive destination for dirty money.
00:57 These laws and the money announced in the budget today will make it much harder for
01:00 criminals, organised crime gangs and corrupt officials to park their money in Australia.
01:05 So are these laws important, Daniel?
01:08 They are.
01:09 You know, Austrac, our financial crimes agency, said that in 2020 alone, a billion dollars
01:15 of funds linked to Chinese criminal gangs was used to buy real estate in Australia.
01:20 A new report from advisory firm Korda Mentha says that 1% of Cambodia's GDP is coming
01:27 to Australia every year, much of that invested in real estate.
01:31 Cambodia is an impoverished nation and yet a full 1% of its GDP is coming to Australia.
01:36 These laws will bring us into line with our neighbours and with other developed nations
01:41 around the world.
01:42 They will put some rigour into these systems and essentially just force those professions
01:47 who deal with large transactions to ask some questions about ones that they think might
01:52 be suspicious.
01:53 Is there much opposition to the laws?
01:55 There is some opposition from the real estate industry.
01:57 They see it as being a regulatory creep and essentially forcing them to do the work that
02:02 they think the AFP and Austrac should be doing.
02:05 But these are the eyes and the ears.
02:07 It's not going to be for every transaction.
02:09 It really is going to be just for ones that are very suspicious.
02:12 This is something that lots of other people have had to do.
02:15 We've already seen a massive crackdown in money laundering through our casinos.
02:18 We're going to now see it through our substantially hot housing market as well.
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