Breakdown of SARs/PTRs for the past three years
Marcus made this Official Information request to New Zealand Police
The request was refused by New Zealand Police.
From: Marcus
Dear New Zealand Police,
Under the Official Information Act, I would like to request the following:
A table containing the number of SARs (Suspicious Activity Reports) and PTRs (Prescribed Transaction Reports) received for the past 3 years from each of the AML/CFT reporting entities that are covered by the Reserve Bank.
That would be the entities that appear here: https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/regulation-and-...
Yours faithfully,
Marcus
From: Ministerial Services
New Zealand Police
Tēnā koe
I acknowledge receipt of your Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) request below.
Your reference number is IR-01-25-11568.
You can expect a response to your request on or before 7 April 2025 unless an extension is needed.
Ngā mihi
Siena (she/her)
Advisor - Ministerial Services
Police National Headquarters
show quoted sections
From: Ministerial Services
New Zealand Police
Tēnā koe Marcus,
Please find attached the response to your Official Information Act
request, received by New Zealand Police on 10/03/2025.
Ngā mihi
Jonelle|Advisor: Ministerial Services |([1]she/her)
Policy & Partnerships |Police National Headquarters |
===============================================================
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References
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Marcus left an annotation ()
Almost a year later, the Ombudsman was able to have a look at my complaint and had the following to say
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Police acknowledges the differences between the response to your request and the earlier response to the other FYI requestor, and agrees the responses are inconsistent. It considers the response to the earlier request to be an exception.
While processing your request, the Police discussed the rerquest with the Reserve Bank of NZ (RBNZ), which is the banking supervisor for the purposes of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009. Police and the RBNZ are both of the position that the information requested has a high degree of commercial sensitivity, and is subject to an obligation of confidence – advising that a breakdown of the information at issue by bank is not even provided to the banking industry itself. If the Ombudsman were to investigate your complaint, he would likely agree with this assessment.
Police has advised that anonymised SAR data is published in the Financial Intelligence Unit’s National Risk Assessments (https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/publ...) and that it is happy to provide you with anonymised SAR and PTR data. If you are interested in obtaining that information, the best way forward would be for you to make a new request to Police.
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It's quite funny that there was the exception at all
Things to do with this request
- Add an annotation (to help the requester or others)
- Download a zip file of all correspondence (note: this contains the same information already available above).
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Marcus left an annotation ()
While I agree that SARs and PTRs are themselves confidential, I don't know that I agree with the refusal justifications given, in that they seem to be at odds with the fact that the FIU have previously disclosed a SAR/PTR count for at least one entity before: https://fyi.org.nz/request/15067-bank-of...
There is perhaps something to be said for the aggregation of information, compared to a single slice, but even so, that previous OIA should have seemingly been refused under similar grounds if it were truly confidential?
Link to this