Overview
- AUSTRAC disclosed on September 7 that it canceled, suspended, or refused to renew 45 remittance and virtual asset registrations over the past year.
- The regulator said businesses with canceled registrations immediately lose the legal right to provide covered services, a point AUSTRAC CEO Brendan Thomas emphasised.
- AUSTRAC singled out BA Digital Ventures (trading as GetCoins), whose registration was canceled on June 4 after customer complaints and coordination with the National Anti‑Scam Centre to disrupt alleged organised crypto investment scams.
- Other recent enforcement actions include AUSTRAC’s August suspension of Cryptolink, which took 96 crypto ATMs offline, an open probe into Western Union’s AML controls from September 1, and prior orders for external audits of larger firms such as Binance Australia.
- AUSTRAC said it acted for varied reasons—dormancy, insolvency, inadequate registration documents, missed reporting and material AML/CTF risk—and it has referred some people to domestic and overseas law enforcement as part of broader efforts to align AML registration with wider financial licensing rules.