A review by the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre shows the country's stock exchange faces a medium level of threat from criminal exploitation.
The latest AUSTRAC report has found fraud is the biggest source of criminal activity involving the Australian Stock Exchange.
The reports says it accounts for half of the more than 660 suspicious transactions reported to the intelligence agency in the past two years.
Justice Minister Michael Keenan says criminals use two main strategies to defraud victims, hacking customers' email accounts or their online-trading accounts.
"About half of these reports involve cybercrime, where customer email accounts and trading accounts have been hacked and, in some cases, money was stolen. We know that the financial sector is a key target of cyber criminals. They continue to focus on Australia, due to our economic prosperity and our high adoption of modern technologies."
The report says more than one in five suspicious transactions involve money laundering and another one in five involves insider trading or market manipulation.
Relatively few cases of tax evasion were reported, and there were three reports of financing terrorism.
Mr Keenan said companies as well as individuals are being targeted.
"Somebody might infiltrate somebody's bank account, infiltrate their trading account, then move money out of that account to the wrong source. Unfortunately, that can happen to small investors, small accounts, but it can also happen on a much larger scale as well."
The latest risk assessment of criminal and terrorist financing has also found criminal syndicates, many based in China, many in Hong Kong, infiltrating Australia's financial markets.
AUSTRAC acting chief executive Peter Clark says that is no surprise because Australia's strong economy is a lucrative target for foreign operators.
"Australia has a very large and liquid financial market. It's the second-largest market in the Asia-Pacific region, in terms of trading, so you would expect that a lot of the countries that are of interest to us are part of this region."
Michael Keenan says the report underlines the importance of guarding Australia's economy against criminal activity.
"To do this, we've provided $127 million to the Serious Financial Crimes Taskforce, $15 million to the Australian Federal Police-led Fraud and Anti-Corruption Centre to tackle bribery and corruption, $20 million to AUSTRAC to boost the detection and disruption of serious financial crimes and $16 million to the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission to boost their capability to disrupt cybercrime."
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