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FACT SHEET
Financial Transaction Reports Amendment Bill 2013
This Bill amends the Financial Transaction Reports Act 1993.
The Bill includes the following amendments, some of which are minor
changes to terminology, and others are more substantive and provide
for police to be provided with further information to assist in the
enforcement of the Crime (Confiscation of Profits) Act 1993:
The Long Title to the Act will be amended to refer to the Anti-Money
Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth); to
"documents" as well as "information"; and to replace the terms
"transactions" and "suspect transactions" with a general reference to
a "matter" or "matters".
In section 4, the Interpretation section, three new definitions are
inserted.
First, because there are now two Commonwealth Acts referred to in
the Tasmanian Act, the title of each is to be defined in the
Interpretation section of the Act. The Anti-Money Laundering and
Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 of the Commonwealth (Cth) is
defined as the "AMLCTF Act" and the Financial Transaction Reports Act
1988 of the Commonwealth is defined as the "FTR Act".
Second, a new term, "designated authority", is introduced in place of
separate references to the "Commissioner of Police" and "a police
officer who is carrying out an investigation arising from, or relating to
matters referred to in, the information" which is now required to be
communicated to the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian
Transaction Report and Analysis Centre under the Anti-Money
Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006.
Third, as a consequence of those changes the existing definition of
"Commonwealth Act" is omitted from section 4(1) and substituted in
subsection (2) with "FTR Act or the AMLCTF Act".
Section 6 will be amended to require a cash dealer to give further
information to a designated authority if that is requested.
A new section 6A will be inserted to enable a designated authority to
obtain further information and obtain documents about a matter
which has already been reported under the AMLCTF Act.
Section 7 will be amended to require a cash dealer to report a
transaction that they have reasonable grounds to suspect may be
relevant to the investigation of, or prosecution of a person for, an
offence against the law of the State or that may be of assistance in
enforcement of the Crime (Confiscation of Profits) Act 1993.
They will be required to report such suspect transactions to the
Commonwealth authorities, the AUSTRAC CEO, even though they
are not required to report them under the AMLCTF or the FTR
Commonwealth legislation.
A new section 7A will be inserted to enable a designated authority to
obtain further information about those suspect transactions which
have been reported to the Commonwealth authority, the AUSTRAC
CEO, under section 7 of the State FTR Act.
Section 8 introduces (for the purpose of that section) a new general
term, "entity", to simplify referring to cash dealers and reporting
entities. The purpose of section 8 is to provide that where an entity,
or a person who is an officer, employee or agent of an entity,
communicates or gives information, or produces documents under
the Commonwealth Acts already referred to or the Crime
(Confiscation of Profits) Act 1993, the entity or person is taken not to
have been in possession of the information at any time. This provides
the entities and their officers, employees and agents protection from
prosecution.
Section 9 will be amended for purely "house-keeping" purposes to
bring the text into line with other State jurisdictions: the words
"anything" and "thing" will replace the words "any matter" and
"matter.
A new section 10A is inserted to remove any doubt that legal
professional privilege is not affected by anything in the Act.