MELBOURNE, Australia—The thousands of dollars that had moved in and out of an account at Australia’s biggest bank was unusual. The account’s holder had not only left the country in 1999 and not returned since, but had also been charged in Lebanon in 2004 with belonging to a terrorist organization and planning terror attacks.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s oversight of money transfers from that account to Lebanon last year was among many failures cited by the Australian federal government’s financial intelligence agency...