Westpac CEO Scandal: Management Ethics Case Study Analysis

This case study analyzes the Westpac banking scandal, which involved allegations of money laundering and child exploitation, leading to the resignation of CEO Brian Hartzer. The report delves into the key ethical problems, focusing on the failures of Westpac to prevent financial transactions linked to child exploitation in the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries. It explores the application of ethical theories such as utilitarianism and deontology to evaluate the situation and identify breaches of ethical conduct. The rationale behind the ethical analysis is discussed, considering both ethical universalism and cultural relativism. Recommendations are proposed, including a risk-based approach, customer due diligence, and prompt reporting of suspicious transactions. Furthermore, the study emphasizes the need for research and understanding of child abuse and neglect, suggesting multisectoral and multidisciplinary approaches to address these issues. The study concludes that by addressing the root causes of money laundering and leveraging current resources, the task of building sustainable child abuse research is achievable. The assignment aligns with the assignment brief, providing a comprehensive analysis of the ethical issues, and proposes strategies to address the problems identified in the case.

Running head: MANAGEMENT ETHICS
Management Ethics
(Westpac)
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author Note

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Executive summary
The Westpac is a popular Australia banking and financial service provider having their headquarters
at Sydney. In this report the case when the CEO of the company, Brian Hartzer was seen to be
pushed out due to the scandal of child exploitation and money laundering is investigated. This
situation has been found to be handled and investigated from the support of the financial intelligence
agency of Australia. The key ethical problems are determined and ethical theories are to be used for
evaluating the key problems are been demonstrated here. After that, a proposal and explanations are
discussed and ethical theories are to be used to denote the ethical issues are identified.

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Table of Contents
Westpac:................................................................................................................................................3
Rationale:...............................................................................................................................................5
Recommendations:................................................................................................................................7
References:............................................................................................................................................9

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Westpac:
The “Westpac Banking Corporation” also referred to as Westpac is a leading bank and
financial service provider from Australia. Their headquarter lies at Westpac place located at Sydney.
The following study demonstrates the case when the CEO of the company named Brian Hartzer
pushed out due to the scandal of child exploitation along with first causality related to money
laundering. The case was handled and investigated by financial intelligence agency of Australia. For
this, the key ethical issues are to be determined and ethical theories are to be used for assessing the
primary issues. Then the report includes the suggestion and justification and ethical theories that are
beneficial for the identification of ethical issues. .
The chief executive of Brian Hartzer is seen to be resigning. Lindsay Maxsted, the chairman
stepped down the early after the scandal of money-laundering including allegations. This involved
the fact that bank has failed to stop transactions with Philippines that included exploitations of
children. He has paid about 2.60 million dollars for performing nothing for the upcoming twelve
months serving out the notice period. This has been revealed by Westpac during an announcement
done to ASX. It is declared that he would not be getting the short-term bonus and might lose the long
term ones that are not vested already (Fargher 2019). Already pressure has been mounting on
Maxsted and Harzer for quitting as the agency of financial intelligence named Austrac launched the
legal steps for accusing bank above 23 million breaches of the anti-money laundering and the
financial laws of counter-terror for more than 11 billion dollars in the transactions (Hoskin-Murray
2020).
The scandal of Westpac involved the twelve year girl that faced sexual exploitation online
along with lax financial regulations. Here, the most harmful allegation was across the alleged failure

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for monitoring customers to send money to the nation of Philippines and additional places to south
east Asana region such that it is consistent with exploitation of children (Debenham 2016). The
allegations by Austrac sparked the various evaluation from federal police, prudent regulator and
corporate regulator. This also included announcement of potential class activities, warning of
probable ratings downgraded from the side of Moody and then pushed the share price of Westpac
down for 4 consecutive days (Brown, Napier and Smith 2020). Various groups involved in child
assault have been slamming as the unforgivable comments done by the Westpac chief executive that
is outgoing that regular people of Australia never have problems with scandals that engulfs that
beleaguered banking business. Brian Hartzer the banking boss has been allegedly much more
concerned to cancel the Christmas booze-up than to deal with shocking breaches that is revealed
through the financial intelligence agency of Australia on money laundering and the offences of child
exploitations. The planclothes police have barged across the red door to the home of the family with
the dense neighborhood of the region in Rizal that was a province about a two hours away from the
area of Manila (Levi and Soudijn 2020). At that place a mother was arrested who was allegedly
exploiting her own twelve year old child. The woman who was 45 years of age has been clutching
her phone and police snatched that and handcuffed her. As per a video shown by IJM or
International Justice Mission, the international business fighting the human trafficking providing
assistance to police showing daughter nearby. The head was been covered through a towel and
nodding at the police. That was watched by the rest of the family. The financial intelligence agency
of Australia launched the legal action that was done against Westpac, one of the biggest bank of the
nation. They accused that of more than 23 million breaches related to anti-money laundering and the
finance laws of counter-terrorism including 11 billion dollars in the transactions involving transfers
connected to child exploitation potentially (De Sanctis 2017). Westpac failed to conduct the suitable
due diligence on the customers to send money to South East Asia and Philippines for the child

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exploitation challenges known. They have not deloyed proper automated detection scenarios for
monitoring the risks known through other channels. This made them get failed to find the activity on
the customers. There are accounts that are indicative of the exploitation of child (Cotter and Durner
2016). Further, they placed failure to deal with customers properly who opened some of their
accounts after the customer sentence regarding the offences of child exploitation are served. The
profits of Commonwealth Bank slum as the bill of compliance surged by 1 billion dollars. They
promptly determined the tasks on a single account that has been indicative of child exploitation and
failed to review the activities promptly in other accounts. Ultimately, the customers have been
sending frequent level of low value payments to the nation of Philippines with channels that were
never been controlled suitably (Fujii-Rajani 2017).
Rationale:
The ethical theories must be implemented to deliver the moral type of reasoning to react to
the situation of conflicts like child assault. The utilitarianism ethical theory attempts to maximize the
happiness that is in line with barriers of the moral choices. On the other hand, the deontological
measure searches for the moral rules for choosing the relevant ones to find the moral activities to be
undertaken. As per due sense, the method of utilitarian lies in favor of child assault as because of the
gaining of additional income that child maximize the individual happiness and delight of parents. On
the other hand, the deontological method indicates the fact that practice of child assault can violate
the moral norms and this require alternative resolution (Wilson and Lavery 2019). The approach is
well-balanced and from ethical pint of view, the present dilemma indicates non-coincidence of the
ethical universalism and cultural relativism. Here, the aforementioned issue is at present unsolved
considering ethical perspective within what the essential of the moral and ethical values and norms
differing from various cultures (Peterson 2017). Hence, there is no other method to applicant of

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universal norms to guide those moral scopes. The rights of human beings lies on the basis of ethical
and moral norms. This has been failing to serve universal level of panacea for solving various issues
that are concerned with protecting distinct freedom. Thus, the universal legalization and
formalization of assault of child need high contribution to be done by internal community, active
pressure groups and civil society for solving problems on worldwide agenda. For becoming effective
the ethical theory must be backed with the strong activity and sustainable degree of distinct
responsibility to fighting against child assault.
Regarding the case of money laundering, the attempts are been criminalized as this
anomalous and state relation with other offense names underlying offense. It is the same token at is
related inextricably with underpinning offense generating the illegal proceeds. Secondly, there is
thinking as per preparation of committing crime. In this case, as the states of laundering the illegal
continues the latest criminality is tended to be generated. Again, the consequentialism includes
punishment as per the basis of that view, foreseeing and looking forwards the future might act.
Thirdly, viewing the money laundering and attempts from arming principle angle one can agree that
they are able to share other common prospective (Catenaccio, Garzone and Sarangi 2017).
The four philosophical positions could influence the way ethical concerns are
institutionalized in the organizational setting. Managers could better distinguish ethical discourse
and legal/judicial realm. Ethical training sessions could be used to make organizational members
circumscribing their moral duties, as to the detection/prevention of money laundering activities.
Qualitative surveys could help to better understand if such philosophical positions are relevant for
decision-making processes and philosophical questioning about ethical issues (Johnston, Werlen and
Link 2018).

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Regarding the money laundering at Westpac, there must be some suitable measures that must
be called for. Firstly, there must be the theory of justices. This must enable to measure the claims of
distinct rights that are done against others and individual rights against claims of social justices of
many. Then there is the inclusive theory of the citizenship giving identification of the primary
necessities of all under the territorial reach of the state and involves the respect for the various
community differences. At this place the ethic of the contextual ethics and care must be taken. This
must set the framework to attend the necessities of concrete one weighing against limits to care
obligations and attend the efficiency of care related to oppressions (Macdonald 2016). Here, the
ethical approach to integrate the views of care and justice. Here, the ethic of institutional and
professional intervention in life of other people despite the consent and request of knowledge and
denote the paternalism issues. Here, the ethics of responsiveness and responsibility as the sense of
obligation is to respond and listen the one who are unable to known from before. Further concerns
can be raised through the discussion of working from perspective of human rights. The moral
philosophy and ethical theory never commonly accept the human rights that is formulated under the
politically negotiated conventions and proclamations to be provided than they derive arguments from
the divine laws. Apart from that, Westpac must be considering critiques of human right faults
discourse to be individualistic overly and obscure from seeing the structural relations present
between the powers (Yip and Lee 2017).
Recommendations:
Westpac must deploy the risk based approach. They must identify the level of their money
laundering and undertake suitable actions in reaction to that. Then, there should be customer due
diligence. Westpac must assure that this is appropriately put to prevent customers from opening
accounts in anonymous under and within factious names. Apart from that suspicious transactions are

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to be reported promptly to the relevant financial units. The transactions particularly includes the
funds suspected to be proceeding of criminal acts and used in financing the crimes. On the other and,
to create the suggestions for advancing child abuse and neglecting researches, Westpac must
determine various guiding principles and cross cutting (Cullen and Hassall 2016). Nevertheless,
these are never independent recommendations and part of rationale for the activities to suggest the
committee and vital considerations for that implementation. There are principles that are critical to
advance the knowledge and understanding of child assault and neglecting. Distancing role of the
cultural processes, influences of social stratifications, immigrant and acculturation status and
ecological variations. Further, the multisector, multimethod and multidisciplinary approaches are to
be applied and the build on and leverage the current base of knowledge regarding child abuse and
neglecting the research and relevant areas. This also includes the opportunities, deigns and research
definitions (Barker and Grantham 2018).
It can be definitely concluded from the above study that uprooting the system from beginning
can diminish money laundering process and thus the criminality could be eradicated. However,
opportunities are present as by leveraging the current resources and creating knowledge base from
prior researches, the task to build sustainable child abuse and then then neglecting research
infrastructure is less daunting that could be appearing. The view makes perfect sense for imposing
punishment under the consequentialist and utilitarianism theories. The money laundering must be
punished due to its morally wrong conduct and damage due to the inextricable connection with
crime generating illegal proceeds and prevent the criminality further due to the forward looking
theory of the punishments imposing harsh punishments serving to gain effective outcomes. Here, the
timing is important apart from exigency of societal burden that is imposed by the child abuse and
neglecting the fast activities that is warranted by fact that developing suitable supports of sustaining
national child abuse and neglecting research enterprise must rake high amount of the time. Further,

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for Westpac a shift in the organizational culture, the development of sustainable infrastructure
developing new generation of the dedicated researches, collection of longitudinal information and
efficient implementation and dissemination research are instances of needed endeavors needing time
prior the related benefits could be understood.
References:
Barker, K. and Grantham, R. eds., 2018. Apportionment in Private Law. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Brown, R., Napier, S. and Smith, R.G., 2020. Australians who view live streaming of child sexual
abuse: An analysis of financial transactions. Trends & Issues in Crime & Criminal Justice, (589).
Catenaccio, P., Garzone, G. and Sarangi, S. eds., 2017. LCM Journal-Vol 4 (2017) No 1:
Professional Practice across Domains: Linguistic and Discursive Perspectives (Vol. 1). LED
Edizioni Universitarie.
Cotter, D. and Durner, T., 2016. Stability and Security Danish Somali Remittance Corridor Case
Study. Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies, 15(1), p.10.
Cullen, R. and Hassall, G., 2016. E-government in the Pacific Island states: ICT policy and
implementation in small island development states. Solomon Islands Country Report.
De Sanctis, F.M., 2017. Money Laundering Typologies Evidenced in the “Panama Papers”. In
International Money Laundering Through Real Estate and Agribusiness (pp. 31-83). Springer,
Cham.
Debenham, D., 2016. Big Data Analytics, Big Financial Institutions, and Big Money Fraud
Litigation. Banking & Finance Law Review, 32(1), p.103.

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Fargher, I.K., 2019. How Westpac is alleged to have broken anti-money laundering laws 23 million
times.
Fujii-Rajani, R., 2017. Money Remitters Left Out in the Cold: Blanket De-Risking Policies,
Counterterrorism and Government Intervention in New Zealand. Auckland UL Rev., 23, p.204.
Hoskin-Murray, C., 2020. Climate Justice: Asymmetrical Responsibilities. ERA Review, p.13.
Johnston, W., Werlen, T. and Link, F. eds., 2018. Set-off law and practice: an international
handbook. Oxford University Press.
Levi, M. and Soudijn, M., 2020. Understanding the Laundering of Organized Crime Money. Crime
and Justice, 49(1), pp.000-000.
Macdonald, J.R., 2016. Time Present and Time Past: US Anti-Treaty Shopping History, Policy and
Rules. Tax Law., 70, p.5.
Peterson, D., 2017. Digital Currencies: Unlocking the Secrets of Crypto-Currencies. Partridge
Publishing Singapore.
Wilson, W. and Lavery, R., 2019. 2030: Advice, investment and superannuation in a brave new
world.
Yip, M. and Lee, J., 2017. The commercialisation of equity. Legal Studies, 37(4), pp.647-671.