Accountants, lawyers and real estate agents in Australia will face multimillion-dollar fines for assisting the illicit tobacco trade under a sweeping expansion of anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism financing laws taking effect on July 1, the Australian Financial Review reported on Wednesday.

The federal Labor government and the country’s financial crimes agency, AUSTRAC, have pledged to target “white-collar professional gatekeepers” who knowingly or unknowingly support organized crime by providing services that manage shell companies, Australian Business Numbers, and bank accounts, the AFR reported.

The reforms extend Australia’s existing financial-crime regime beyond the banking sector to capture so-called gatekeeper professions, including trust and company service providers. AUSTRAC will gain earlier visibility of suspicious business structures, hidden beneficial ownership, and illicit proceeds funneled into assets such as property, according to the AFR.

“Ignorance will not be bliss, and professional services firms will have a legal obligation to really know their customers and ensure they are not unwittingly assisting organized crime,” Julian Hill, the assistant minister for customs, told the newspaper.

Under the changes, the maximum civil penalty a court can impose on a body corporate is A$33 million, and up to A$6.6 million for individuals, the news outlet said. AUSTRAC proceedings frequently involve multiple breaches and can result in penalties reaching into the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the report.

The government has signaled it intends to use the enhanced powers to disrupt profits from the illicit tobacco trade, which the Illicit Tobacco and E-cigarette Commissioner estimates generates between A$4.1 billion and A$6.9 billion in profit for organized criminals, a sum that is more than cocaine, cannabis, heroin, and ecstasy combined, the AFR reported. Those profits can be moved out of Australia within 42 hours, the publication said.

AUSTRAC chief executive Brendan Thomas told the AFR the reforms would provide intelligence to block attempts to conceal and recycle criminal profits. “The criminals behind illicit tobacco are profit-driven and highly adaptive. They don’t just move cash. They use company structures, trusted intermediaries, and real estate to launder and store their profits,” he said.

Professional bodies, while broadly backing the reforms, warned that smaller firms could be caught out by the compressed timetable and the complexity of the new obligations, according to the report.

Belinda Zohrab, regulations and standards lead at CPA Australia, told the AFR the industry broadly backed reforms that protected accountancy firms from being used by transnational criminal networks involved in tobacco smuggling, human trafficking, and child pornography. But she said members were “overwhelmed” by the cost and stress of enrolling and meeting compliance measures, given that final guidelines were issued only late last year ahead of the July deadline.

Juliana Warner, who led the Law Council of Australia’s AML/CTF working group, said the legal profession was bracing for a “significant amount” of additional regulatory work and was still awaiting AUSTRAC guidance on which “designated services” would trigger obligations under the legislation. Despite the release of government “starter kits” in January, individual practitioners still faced a major challenge in getting across the detail, she told the newspaper.