Dennis Miralis is a leading Australian defence lawyer with over 20 years of experience. Dennis is a Partner at Nyman Gibson Miralis and specialises in international criminal law.

AUSTRAC taskforce seeks to ensure crypto ATMs are compliant with Australian AML/CTF and finance regulations

Citing an increasing number of concerns around non-compliant crypto ATMs being used in Australia to engage in money laundering, financial scams, and terrorism financing, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) in December 2024 formed a specialised internal taskforce to crack down and eliminate non-compliant crypto services and their operators/owners.   What are crypto…

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Non-compliance offenses and their penalties under the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme

What is the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme? The Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme (FITS) is a statute-based scheme whose purpose is to provide the Australian government and public with “visibility of the nature, level and extent of foreign influence on Australia’s government and politics”.   How does it work? Under the scheme, all foreign entities, organisations,…

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Attorney-General’s annual report highlights international prisoner transfer and mutual assistance findings

Every year, the Australian Attorney-General’s office publishes an annual report that includes the department’s audited financial statements, as well as the secretary’s year in review, significant departmental achievements, and performance statements. The back end of the report includes several appendices that cover multiple topics, including Appendix 5, which reports on Australia’s involvement in international prisoner…

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FATF actions in 2025

About the FATF Established in 1989 by the Group of 7 (G7), the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is an intergovernmental task force that functions as an international watchdog for global money laundering and terrorism financing. The FATF regularly reviews countries with deficiencies in anti-money laundering (AML), financing of terrorism (CFT), and counter-proliferation financing (CPF)…

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How the ATO issues and remits penalties

Penalty provisions exist to encourage taxpayers to “take reasonable care in complying with their tax obligations” and take the form of different penalty unit amounts calculated in Australian dollars.   Best of Intentions The ATO recognises that not everyone lodges taxes on time and that sometimes life gets in the way, stating “[g]enerally, we don’t…

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Open AI privacy policies and data requests

In light of changing regulations, views, and data storage solutions in recent years, Open AI, the creators of ChatGPT, provided an update in late 2024 to its privacy policies, to better inform users as to the use of data controllers, what data is collected, how it’s used, retained, and more.   Primary Sources In its…

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