The British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC) appears to be skeptical of claims that .5 million was stolen from a legal trust, converted to cash at the Burnaby casino and then transferred to China.
Real estate attorney Hong Guo is the one making the allegations that her firm, located in Richmond was robbed of funds that were then laundered at the Gateway Casinos Burnaby in the early part of this year.
She claims this money was first stolen by two former employees and converted into forged checks and then deposited into their bank accounts. Then the money was deposited into client accounts at the casino and eventually sent to China. One of the former employees eventually ran away to Chine while the other pocketed the money, Guo claims.
The plaintiff, interviewed by Postmedia said, “It’s very interesting, one manager from this casino said that if a person deposits a bank draft, they could withdraw cash. If that is the case, then lots of people would use this channel to laundry money.”
Ross Alderson, the lottery’s director of anti-money laundering says that the transactions described by Guo don’t make sense for someone trying to launder money. He said that the process ought to be reversed. He told the Province: “The whole idea of laundering money is to take dirty funds and turn it into clean funds, that you want put into the financial system.”
He added, “So by someone taking it out of the financial system and then putting it into cash or chips (in a casino), it really defeats the purpose of a money launderer. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Because you are putting (funds) into a less-preferable method which you then have to put back into the financial system.”
David Eby, a member of the Legislative Assembly whose brief is gambling, said, “I’m not sure why a launderer would go to a casino to get cash, because if you are a launderer once you have a bank draft in hand I think you have succeeded. Any bank will give you cash for that bank draft.”
