Page 5605 - Week 17 - Thursday, 5 December 1991
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control to produce such documents to a police officer or, alternatively, to make them available for inspection to such an officer. A breach of a production order constitutes an offence.
Where it is inappropriate to seek a production order, either because property cannot be identified with sufficient particularity or because there are grounds to believe that a production order is unlikely to be complied with or may prejudice effective law enforcement, a search warrant may be granted to search for and seize property tracking documents.
Another significant measure is the introduction of monitoring orders, directing a financial institution to give information over specified periods of time to law enforcement authorities about transactions conducted through accounts held by a particular person. Monitoring orders are available only in relation to serious offences involving narcotic drugs, organised fraud or money laundering the proceeds of drug trafficking or organised fraud.
As part of the process of enabling law enforcement agencies to follow the money trail, the legislation places a statutory obligation on financial institutions to retain certain records. Records which relate to the opening of accounts must be retained in original form for seven years after closure of the relevant account. All other documents necessary to reconstruct transactions in excess of $200 must be retained for a period of seven years after the transaction in original or some other form, including microfiche.
The Bill creates two new offences relating to money laundering. The first of these is a serious offence of engaging in money laundering where the person knows or ought reasonably to have known that the property is, in fact, the proceeds of crime. The legislation also creates a less serious indictable offence of laundering property which is reasonably suspected of being proceeds of crime. This offence is very similar to the offence of possession of goods reasonably suspected of having been stolen, which has proved to be an effective law enforcement tool against theft.
The legislation also creates a new offence of organised fraud, which is constituted by acts and omissions which constitute three or more public fraud offences from which the person has derived substantial benefit. This offence is specifically designed for persons who have been engaged in a pattern of conduct over a period of time from which they have benefited to the detriment of society, in particular directed against so-called white collar crime.
The Bill also provides for the problem of dealing with absconders. In certain circumstances a person who has absconded can be taken to have been convicted of an offence and be liable to confiscation proceedings. Before a
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