Chief of Australia’s biggest bank to retire amid laundering scandal

The chief executive of Australia's biggest bank, the

Commonwealth Bank of Australia, will retire by the end of 2018 financial

year, the company said Monday, amid pressure from regulators over

alleged breaches of money laundering and terrorism financing laws.

The

bank's chair Catherine Livingstone said in an online statement that Ian

Narev’s exact retiring time depends on the outcome of an ongoing

internal and external search process.

The board of

bank will provide details of its planned chief executive succession

process to ensure “certainty for the business,” the statement said.

Narev

faced calls to step down last week after the financial intelligence

agency Australian Transactions Reports & Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC)

launched a civil action against the bank alleging "serious and systemic

non-compliance" of the laws on 53,700 occasions.

AUSTRAC

alleged that the suspected money laundering was conducted through the

bank’s accounts by way of cash deposits, many through intelligent

deposit machines, followed immediately by international and domestic

transfers, and the bank failed to report these suspicious cash

transactions in time for assessment as anti-money laundering laws

required,ABC reported on August 3.

The maximum penalty for each of the contraventions can be up to 18 million Australian dollars, the report said.