British Columbia’s crusading Attorney General David Eby earlier this week testified to the federal parliament to drum up support for his fight to stamp out money laundering in his province’s casinos.
Speaking before the committee of the House of Commons Eby noted that suspicious transactions fell to $200,000 in February from a high of $20 million three years ago. “We have reduced it by a factor of 100,” he said.
The changes were made based on recommendations from an independent review conducted in September by former Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioner Peter German.
He conceded that not all such transactions were crime-related. He added that the problem still exists and probably has just moved elsewhere. “I believe that money has moved elsewhere, and I also believe we have a concern that needs to be dealt with bank drafts,” he said.
Eby will be traveling to Ottawa to speak to a committee. As a guest on a TV show Eby said “The concern I have is that the news, the stories that I have about the hockey bags full of $20 bills, are not making it over the mountain to Ottawa.” He added, “And what I really want to do, and the intent of showing up at the federal committee is to make sure that all parties, not just the government in Ottawa, but all parties are aware of the urgency of the federal government being involved here.”
Eby has called attention to money laundering in British Columbia casinos and the real estate industry. He added, “There’s also significant inter-governmental channels that our government has opened with the federal government to talk about things like tax evasion and money laundering, particularly in the real estate market.”
A report that set off alarms several months ago noted that the top 10 occupations of the top spending gamblers at River Rock Casino were listed as “housewives” three years ago.
That confidential report to the B.C. Lottery Corp. was uncovered by Postmedia.
Eby asked that controls be clamped down on BC casinos to require that sources of cash deposits larger than $10,000 be listed. Since that tightening suspicious casino-cash transactions have decreased dramatically.
