AUSTRAC’s Money Laundering Update 2026 outlines a more complex, tech-enabled laundering threat, where crypto, digital payments, and cross-border networks are fueling and masking illicit financial flows

The update identifies enduring laundering methods including cash structuring, professional facilitators, trade-based money laundering, and misuse of property and corporate vehicles, while highlighting how technology is accelerating identity fraud, document forgery, and transaction concealment. AUSTRAC also stresses that increasing convergence between money laundering, cybercrime, scams, and transnational organised crime is complicating risk detection and reinforcing the need for stronger intelligence sharing, risk-based controls, and cross-sector AML/CFT coordination…