AND IAN MULGREW,
The much-anticipated report into money laundering in B.C. casinos released Wednesday turned out to be a political whitewash.
The police didn’t do their job, the government’s gaming and policy-enforcement branch didn’t do its job, the B.C. Lottery Corp. didn’t do its job, government officials and politicians didn’t do their job.
But no one is being named or blamed.
“This is not a fault-finding report,” said author Peter German. “We’re looking forward ... I attribute it to a system breakdown.”
Quelle surprise from the man who watched this scandal develop while he served as the RCMP deputy commissioner for western and northern Canada.
Attorney General David Eby took the same let-bygones-bebygones approach: “The responsibility lies with the (Liberal) government and the government has been removed.”
Balderdash — these were wellpaid civil servants, Crown corporation managers, senior police officers, as well as politicians, and they should all be called on the mat for what is charitably called “wilful blindness.”
This was just laziness, incompetence or lack of will?
In the 247-page report, entitled Dirty Money, ex-cop-turned-consultant German unleashed a ream of rhetoric and 48 recommendations. He wants a new gambling police force, more public servants, more regulations ... and his wish list will be funded by gambling revenue that should be earmarked for social services.
Yet even German admits this focus on casinos is too late, the horse has bolted from the barn and they’re not the key problem.
“Money laundering occurs in many forms and in most sectors of the economy and includes deposit-taking institutions, currency-exchange houses, the securities industry, real estate, commercial trading, corporations, gold-and-precious-gem merchants, cash purchases of expensive items, gambling, the insurance industry, lawyer trust accounts and accountants. Of all these conduits, deposit-taking institutions, which encompass chartered banks, credit unions, caisses populaire and trust companies are of greatest importance, as they represent a perfect vehicle to provide the legitimization of illicit money while maintaining anonymity for the criminal enterprise.”
So why would B.C. establish a specialized casino police force when various industries and unregulated sectors of the economy are implicated?
In fact, German admits the egregious money laundering is no longer happening. He wants an investigation into the real estate industry, horse racing, used-car sales, jewelry … But how about the real facilitators — those financial institutions?
The government has known about the flaws and the dangers since the turn of the century.
For instance, the five large B.C. casinos are situated in different municipalities, each with its own municipal police or RCMP detachment: River Rock is policed by the Richmond Mounties, the Grand Villa by the Burnaby RCMP, Hard Rock by Coquitlam RCMP, the Starlight by New Westminster PD and the Parq by VPD.
The RCMP, however, devoted few resources to money laundering and municipal forces didn’t want to hear about it. There were multiple reports over the years.
In 2006, Ontario reported possible money-laundering cases worth $15.5 million, yet only $60,000 in suspicious transactions were reported in B.C.
By the end of 2011, there had been a 500 per cent increase from 2007 in suspicious transactions in B.C. The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre, the federal intelligence agency, complained about the situation in 2008.
In 2009, though, the B.C. Liberal administration disbanded the specialized enforcement team. That same year Fintrac fined BCLC $670,000 because for years it had been incorrectly reporting suspicious transactions. That sparked an expensive, six-year court fight between these two organizations until the case was dropped.
The relationship between the lottery corporation and the finance ministry’s gaming-policy enforcement branch, German said, was “at best strained; and at worst, broken.”
The culture of distrust was described as a “poisoned attitude,” a “toxic attitude,” a “critical breakdown,” “absolute mistrust” and branch “pointing the finger at BCLC.”
By the end of 2012, the year German resigned as the top western Canadian Mountie, there were 1,173 suspicious cash transactions reported by B.C. casinos totalling $88.7 million, outstripping the most pessimistic estimates.
Nowhere in his report does he offer a personal perspective or explain what role he played while this social cancer metastasized.
Police failed miserably to curtail organized crime and even stopped chasing money laundering. Fights between those responsible for policing and BCLC became so heated in 2013 and 2014 that the executive director of enforcement and the senior director of the gaming-policy enforcement branch’s investigations division were fired and three other employees, including the person leading the money-laundering strategy, were reassigned.
Forget the years-old videos of people counting money for casino tellers; where are the arrests, the prosecutions, the convictions? Nowhere to be seen.
German said “police are not currently in a position to initiate investigations into money laundering within Lower Mainland casinos,” even though all the suspected bad guys are photographed, captured on video and asked to fill in banking forms with their personal information.
Ontario doesn’t have these problems because it has its own provincial police force and long ago took money laundering seriously with a dedicated casino bureau of more than 150 officers modelled on the successful New Jersey State Police unit used to battle organized crime in Atlantic City casinos.
B.C. won’t even discuss regional policing, getting rid of the RCMP and bringing in a provincial police force like Ontario’s or changing our drug laws to reduce the trafficking blamed as the source of the money.
I have an idea: Let’s fire those who didn’t do their job, replace the Mounties with a provincial police force and demand accountability from the politicians and well-paid civil servants who have “inadvertently” aided and abetted organized crime by turning a blind eye.
I’ll take a line from German’s report: “The old adage, ‘Don’t throw good money after bad,’ applies in this case.”