BNZ has received a formal warning from the Reserve Bank for breaching anti-money laundering law.
The breaches involved more than 50,000 domestic cash transactions (actual folding money) handled by BNZ between November 2018 and April 2020.
According to the Reserve Bank, BNZ failed to report the correct location for the transactions in the prescribed transactions reports (PTRs) it was required to send to the Police Financial Intelligence Unit, breaching its responsibilities under the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act (AML/CFT Act).
BNZ identified the cause of the breach as a coding error in its computer processing system.
"BNZ promptly remediated the matter and has fully co-operated with the Reserve Bank during the investigation," Reserve Bank Deputy Governor Christian Hawkesby said.
"The PTR regime is important for building an intelligence picture across New Zealand's financial system.
"Unfortunately, these coding errors compromised the quality of information held by the Financial Intelligence Unit.
"We note that BNZ self-reported this issue to us and has worked hard to remediate the issue and provide the Financial Intelligence Unit with the corrected information," Hawkesby said.
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