The Crown Counsel of British Columbia, Canada now has all the evidence laid before it by law enforcement for it to consider a prosecution in a major casino money laundering and mob activity case that is the culmination of several years of investigations. The casinos were all located in the Lower Mainland.
In Canada, the Crown Counsel is entrusted with the prosecution of all criminal offences. They work for the BC Prosecution Service under the Ministry of Attorney General. AG David Eby is the official who last year first called for a massive investigation of money laundering by several casinos in BC.
Officials at the AG’s office and the office of the Solicitor General have declined requests to comment on the case.
The files were laid before the Crown Counsel back in September, according to a spokesman for the B.C. Prosecution Service.
Crown prosecutors will now decide whether to lay charges based on evidence put before them by police who exposed a network of illegal gambling and money laundering that involves Chinese nationals who avoided their own country’s rules against taking money out the country.
The investigation was spear-headed by the province’s anti-gang task force, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit of B.C., that made nine arrests 18 months ago.
B.C. Prosecution Service’s communications counsel Dan McLaughlin told the Vancouver Sun, “That process is currently underway. We do not have a timeline for the completion of the assessment.”
No further arrests have been made since the initial arrests were announced in June 2017, said Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sgt. Brenda Winpenny, who is the RCMP spokesman. She noted that the complex nature of the case meant that a large number of files were turned over to prosecutors. More than 200 police were working on the case at its height, she said.
The investigation began in 2016 at the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit as it followed up on reports of illegal gambling, loan sharking and money laundering for drug dealers, kidnappers and extortionists.
At the time of the arrests CFSEU Assistant Commissioner Kevin Hackett commented, “During the investigation, it was apparent there were multiple roles filled by different people who enabled or facilitated the organization in laundering large amounts of money through casinos.”
He estimated that millions of dollars were money laundered. He did not name individual casinos, except to say they were all in the Lower Mainland.
At that time police searched six homes and seized money, drugs, cellphones, computers and several luxury cars, one of which had a spy-level of a sophisticated hidden compartment. Hackett displayed large stacks of bills, scales and bill counters during that news conference.
A separate but concurrent investigation was led by RCMP called E-Pirate. This led to charges against Silver International, an illegal money services business based in Richmond. However, mysteriously, the government stayed the charges in November—an action that Attorney General Eby was highly critical of, declaring, “I was incredibly disappointed—as I imagine are many British Columbians,” adding, “It is a disturbing signal that a prosecution of this magnitude collapses shortly before going to trial.”
The Civil Forfeiture office has filed to seize a $2.3 million home in Vancouver, $2 million in cash and chips from River Rock Casino as criminal proceeds as a result of the E-Pirate investigation. It alleges that at $220 million was laundered during the course of a year
