ANOTHER interesting contribution from Sydneysider PETER MAIR which reads:
AUSTRAC’s interest in possible money-laundering activity in Tabcorp’s retail agencies adds to concerns that cash may also be reflecting in bets placed with an ‘insider trading’ advantage.
For better-informed and more professional-punters especially, ‘winners’ denied accounts with TAB’s and other off-course bookmakers, cash-betting may be the open option to get on. Punters apparently better-informed, include third-parties given inside-information about likely race outcomes. Information withheld from others.
As a practical matter, because most cash bets are of modest values (having nothing to do with ‘launderers’ or ‘insiders’) AUSTRAC”s investigation is presumably focused on ‘big bets’ (and ‘big payouts’).
Launderers’ are risk-averse – minimising ‘socks lost in the wash’ favours short-priced bets, albeit filtered by professional flags on false favourites. That ‘insiders’ are, conversely, betting on ‘more certain’ and longer-odds chances, should broaden the focus to include bets yielding big cash-payouts. ‘Launderers’ would, of course, appreciate insider leg-ups onto good things at any price.
As for AUSTRAC, its regulatory brief for the Tabcorp inquiry is primarily about ‘launderers’ – some would be launderers newly avoiding poker-machine washing machines, now being more closely monitored.
However, it may be that AUSTRAC is, by law, fitted with blinkers – a narrow vision – and a tongue-tie precluding findings beyond ‘laundering’. It would be a sadly missed opportunity if its investigation cannot also ‘see’ and embrace evidence of ‘insider trading’.
Hoping a ‘missed opportunity’ will be avoided opens the question of the racing industry asking AUSTRAC to share evidence of insider-trading arising in its investigations – for example, clusters of ‘cash payouts’ on longer-priced runners winning ‘unexpectedly’.
The alternative hope would be for the racing industry – its stewards and integrity teams – to separately plan to be better informed of evidence indicative of ‘insider trading’.
Tackling ‘laundering’ and ‘insider-trading’ collectively together, or separately, will at least require Tabcorp to monitor cash-betting activity and to share ‘flagged activity’ with AUSTRAC and, preferably in real time, with racing stewards.
Given that it would be astonishing that such monitoring and alerting is not already being done — ‘Why Not?’ is presumably at the heart of the decision for AUSTRAC to investigate Tabcorp in relation to money laundering. Racing administrators would share responsibility deemed deserved.
That said, whatever may newly be required of Tabcorp by AUSTRAC, in relation to monitoring cash-betting, it would be remiss of the racing industry if it did not similarly engage with Tabcorp to put in place a real-time feed of cash-betting activity indicative of both odds-crushing ‘laundering’ or the more insidious ‘insider trading’.
