Commonwealth Bank of Australia

In April 2021, the Federal Court ordered Commonwealth Bank of Australia to pay a A$7 million penalty after findings that it made false or misleading representations and engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct involving business overdraft interest rates. ASIC said that between December 2014 and March 2018, CBA told customers that certain overdraft facilities would generally be charged interest at around 16 percent. Because of a systems error, more than 1,500 customers were instead charged substantially higher rates, in many cases approximately 34 percent. The misconduct resulted in 12,119 instances of false or misleading representations. CBA admitted the conduct. Source: Australian Securities and Investments Commission https://asic.gov.au/about-asic/news-centre/find-a-media-release/2021-releases/21-065mr-cba-to-pay-7-million-court-penalty-for-overcharged-interest-royal-commission-case-study/

In June 2018, the Federal Court ordered Commonwealth Bank of Australia to pay a A$700 million civil penalty for breaches of Australia's anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism-financing laws. CBA admitted to 53,750 contraventions of the AML/CTF Act. AUSTRAC's investigation focused heavily on CBA's Intelligent Deposit Machines, which were used in transactions involving proceeds of crime. The admitted failures included deficiencies in transaction reporting, suspicious-matter reporting and management of money-laundering risks. At the time, the A$700 million penalty was the largest civil penalty in Australian corporate history. Sources: AUSTRAC https://www.austrac.gov.au/news-and-media/media-release/austrac-welcomes-federal-court-orders-cba-penalty AUSTRAC enforcement register https://www.austrac.gov.au/about-us/record-our-actions/enforcement-actions-taken