Westpac's outgoing chairman Lindsay Maxsted yesterday dismissed claims that the company's executives and directors knew customers were using accounts to pay for online child exploitation services before Austrac alerted such concerns to the bank earlier this month.Maxsted's unequivocal defence of the company came after embattled chief executive Brian Hartzer announced he would resign from the bank on Friday to make way for chief financial officer Peter King to take the reins in an acting capacity.Maxsted also announced he would expedite his departure from the board before the end of June next year and non-executive director Ewen Crouch would not seek re-election at the annual meeting on 12 December.Hartzer's departure followed intense lobbying on Monday from institutional shareholders and federal politicians for the Westpac board to make senior executives accountable for the systemic breakdown of anti-money laundering systems at the bank.Treasurer Josh Frydenberg confirmed in a doorstop interview that he was among those on Monday to reiterate the government's concerns with Austrac's claim that Westpac committed 23 million breaches of anti-money laundering laws and facilitated international transactions related to child exploitation ."I've had conversations with Westpac and those discussions were constructive," the treasurer said."I made clear the seriousness of those issues, but also the bank itself and the board itself have been having many meetings, including with its own shareholders."During a media teleconference on Tuesday morning, Maxsted defended the bank against suggestions it had not acted on reports that indicated some customers were using a cross border transfer service known as LitePay to pay for services linked to child exploitation."No, we had no knowledge in advance of last Friday week, 15 November, which was when we received an email from Austrac indicating that they had issues in relation to our payment systems into the Philippines through LitePay," Maxsted said."That was the first time it was mentioned that there were 12 customers of particular concern to them."In the statement of claim brought against the bank in the Federal Court last week, Austrac alleges that customers had been using bank accounts to pay for child exploitation services in the Philippines since 2013.The financial crimes regulator alleges in the case of an account holder called "Customer 1" that the bank began to identify in June of this year transaction activity "indicative of child exploitation typologies".Customer 1 had been transacting on the account for six years, racking up 607 international transactions worth $132,000."Had Westpac been applying appropriate detection scenarios for child exploitation typologies to Customer 1's account, this activity would have been identified earlier," the regulator asserts in its statement of claim.There appears to be a dispute between Austrac and Westpac on whether the bank was actually identifying customers involved in child exploitation since June of this year.While Austrac asserts that Westpac's monitoring systems were detecting such behaviour, Maxsted is adamant that the bank did not report any knowledge of potential child exploitation activity on accounts held at the bank."No, there's no self-reporting of any knowledge of issues in relation to this matter," he said.However,