British Columbia’s casino industry has been rocked by an investigation into alleged widespread money laundering by a network of junketeers, underground bankers and organized crime factions operating out of Macau and mainland China.
The joint investigation by the federal organized crime unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and China’s national police service is focused on a high-end money-transfer business called Silver International Investment, based in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond, and its alleged head, Paul King Jin, a 50-year-old Richmond spa owner.
The probe, which has triggered more than 10 police raids to date, according to news reports, has prompted the B.C. Lottery Corporation to order a review of its casino operations.
Investigators say Silver International operated through a network of casinos in Macau and British Columbia to launder hundreds of millions of dollars, funds tied to “transnational drug trafficking (that) could have a potentially devastating impact on the casino industry,” according to documents made public by BCLC and provincial authorities.
Those documents accuse Jin of recruiting wealthy mainland Chinese gamblers in Macau to gamble in British Columbia, mainly at River Rock Casino, with large loans that also enabled their recipients to invest in high-end real estate in the province, authorities say. Operating in conjunction with shadow banking channels in China the gamblers were thus able to evade the country’s strict capital controls and transfer wealth into Canada.
It was the RCMP’s surveillance of gambling and cash drops at River Rock Casino that led to Silver International, investigators say, but underground casinos in Richmond also were involved.
“Part of what we found, is they had two ongoing illegal casinos where the same businessmen who are part of the conspiracy were able to provide non-legal gambling for these offshore gamblers,” one of the lead investigators said.
The RCMP has seized more than 100 computers and cellphones in the raids, along with other Silver International documents that suggest that in one year alone the company laundered C$220 million in cash in British Columbia and sent more than $300 million offshore.
The raids also netted more than $9 million in cash, mostly in small bills.
“This is huge,” said one police officer, who spoke to news outlet Postmedia on condition of anonymity. “This could change money laundering in B.C.”
Zachary Ng, a lawyer for Jin, told Postmedia he could not yet comment on the allegations.
