The Commonwealth Bank is being accused of more than fifty-three thousand breaches of laws put in place to combat money laundering and terrorism financing.
The federal government's financial intelligence unit, AUSTRAC, has launched civil penalty proceedings against the bank in the Federal Court.
AUSTRAC has been looking into the bank's use of intelligent deposit machines- Automatic Teller Machines that can accept transactions of up to 20 thousand dollars at a time.
It's alleged the bank didn't look into the money laundering and terrorism aspects of these machines adequately.
The bank is accused of not adequately reporting 625 million dollars of transactions involving these machines, and of failing to report 77 million dollars worth of suspicious transactions, either on time or at all.
Ric Spooner of C-M-C markets says the allegations are important- and so is their timing.
