Two Defendants Plead Guilty for Their Roles Helping Cybercriminals Launder Money as Part of the QQAAZZ Organization

Brett Martin

Chairperson (elect) - OECD Taskforce on Tax Crime and Other Crimes at OECD - OCDE

OECD - OCDEUNSW

Brett Martin, ATO, joined the ATO in 2005. He has worked as Assistant Commissioner in the Serious Non Compliance and then the Aggressive Tax Planning areas of the ATO before turning to

the role of General Manager with the Australian Valuation Office (a commercial operation within the ATO providing valuation services and advice to all tiers of government). Following this experience, Brett joined the Indirect Tax business line – with responsibility for the ATO’s risk management across indirect taxes such as GST, Excise, Luxury Car Tax etc... Brett’s current role within the Smarter Data Program focuses on how the ATO approaches risk assessment, intelligence, analytics, information management and technology - to use data in a smarter way to improve decisions, services and compliance …

Chairperson (elect) - OECD Taskforce on Tax Crime and Other Crimes

OECD - OCDE

Aug 2021 - Present1 month

Tax crimes, money laundering and other financial crimes threaten the strategic, political and economic interests of both developed and developing countries. They also undermine citizens’ confidence in their governments’ ability to get taxpayers to pay their taxes and may deprive governments of revenues needed for sustainable development. The OECD's Task Force on Tax Crimes and Other Crimes (TFTC) has a mandate to improve co-operation between tax and law enforcement agencies, including anti-corruption and anti-money laundering authorities, to counter financial crimes more effectively.

5 August 2021

During our first Fraud Data Sharing and Analytics Conference in 2019, we listened – starry eyed – to the UK’s Rob Malcomson and Mark Cheeseman OBE tell their story. They showcased the successful work of the UK’s Counter Fraud Function to deliver data pilots to find and prevent fraud. We recall the feelings of excitement at the time, thinking about all the possibilities here in Australia. We also recall thinking how far we still had to go in our own journey.

Brett Martin, Assistant Commissioner (Transnational Crime Program) from the ATO joined counterparts from the US and UK in an international panel discussion on overcoming challenges to cross-agency collaboration.

The forum resulted in invaluable discussion of common challenges and facilitated the development of new international relationships. We wish to thank our colleagues from Services Australia and the ATO who delivered presentations and to Brett Martin for providing expert advice from the Australian context.

As we look to our future, improving fraud data capability will continue to remain an important priority for the Centre. Not only are we continuing to support data sharing pilots, we will also be delivering projects to continue to build knowledge and capability to use data analytics to find and prevent fraud.

We are even more excited now than we were in 2019 about the possibilities we can achieve here in Australia. Now we have a firm foundation to build upon, the feelings of trepidation are gone. We also believe more than ever that we can unlock the power of data to reinforce the integrity of government programs and protect our services and citizens against the financial and human impacts of fraud.

Continuing our journey to build data capability

OECD - Tax Crime

Heads of tax crime investigation welcome new OECD report on fighting tax crimes17 June 2021

A dedicated session on "professional enablers" of tax and white collar crimes took place at the 2021 OECD Global Anti-Corruption and Integrity Forum24 March 2021

OECD calls on countries to crack down on the professionals enabling tax and white collar crimes25 February 2021

New OECD self-assessment tool to help jurisdictions tackle tax crimes30 November 2020

OECD supports APEC Economies in fight against tax crime14 October 2019

OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann's biography - OECD

Mathias Cormann is the 6th Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).