Ontario’s Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk has called the province’s casinos a “major risk” for money laundering. Lysyk blamed the poor enforcement of regulations by the provincial gaming regulator and the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), which has 67 officers assigned to the anti-money laundering unit.
In an annual report, Lysyk said that from 2017 to 2019, casinos alerted the Alcohol and Gaming Commission about 10,000 suspicious transactions with possible money laundering or terrorist connections totaling more than $340 million.
During that time, she declared, “few charges were laid, low amounts of cash were seized, and few people were barred from casinos.”
The most notorious case occurred at Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort, where there were 862 suspicious transactions totaling $139 million in 2019.
The OPP rarely used the Canada Revenue Agency as a resource in such cases, relying chiefly on criminal background checks, said the report, which indicated “these individuals were allowed to continue gambling.” Only about 2 percent of the 1,698 people accused of suspicious transactions were barred from the casino, wrote Lysyk.
The auditor recommends that patrons not be allowed through the doors of casinos with large amounts of cash. She also calls for using all available investigative tools to fight money laundering, and the development and use of better systems for determining the source of money. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission has agreed to implement Lysyk’s recommendations.
Elsewhere in Canada, the former commanding officer of a British Columbia Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) anti-illegal gaming unit testified that he was stunned when the provincial government disbanded his unit in 2009, after he warned that the decision would let organized crime run rampant.
On December 2, Inspector Wayne Holland, who took control of the anti-illegal gaming unit in 2007, told a panel looking into money laundering that he expected his unit had been chronically understaffed, and organized crime, money laundering and loan sharking were embedded in B.C. Lottery Corp. casinos.
His threat report, obtained by Global News in a freedom of information request, also warned of extreme crimes and violence—including murders, loan-sharking extortions, kidnappings, human-trafficking and prostitution—stemming from casinos. Holland said an Asian-organized crime figure was even allowed to buy a stake in a B.C. government casino.
“The (threat) document was more substantial than we ever anticipated,” Holland told the commission. “It was very sobering.”
But at a board meeting late in 2008, a deputy minister for then-gaming minister Rich Coleman told Holland that his 12-person unit would likely be dissolved. “I thought that dissolving (the unit) would put us back a decade or more,” Holland testified this month. “Because police know you give a criminal entity (opportunity) and they will entrench. They are like moss on a rock. They will grow and prosper.”
Coleman denies that he ignored crime in B.C. casinos. He said his bosses might have “acceded” to the provincial government decision, but he doesn’t believe the RCMP supported the move.
“I never, to my satisfaction, received a concrete answer,” Holland said. “And I remain to this day, uncertain why (the anti-illegal gaming unit) was collapsed.”
