A report prepared by a former RCMP commissioner for the Attorney General of British Columbia, David Eby, shows that casinos in the Canadian province enabled widespread money laundering.
The report makes a series of 48 recommendations, that combined with reforms already, Eby predicts will hereafter cripple the mob in moving money around the province. Eby pointed to the arrest last money of an international casino money-laundering suspect, Dan Bai Shun Jin, at River Rock Casino in May.
The report was prepared by Peter German, former deputy commission of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Correctional Service Canada.
German has been conducting the review since September, ever since Eby recruited him to investigate what the AG called “serious allegations about widespread, trans-national money laundering in gaming facilities in the Lower Mainland.”
At that time the authorities discovered that in July 2015 casinos throughout British Columbia reported $20 million in hard to explain transactions. One month River Rock casino accepted more than $13 million in $20 bills.
Last week he told the Globe and Mail “The report will really help British Columbians understand why this is a concern and the scope and scale of the issue that we face,” he said. “And, more importantly, for government and the province and hopefully other jurisdictions, it will illustrate how a regulatory system can fail and how we can avoid that in the future.”
German’s initial recommendations were implemented in December. Among them was new rules forcing “whales” to disclose the source of their money.
Eby said that Jin’s arrest “reflects a shift in the culture and the approach, so I’m very pleased to see law enforcement taking these very necessary steps.” He is calling for the federal government to step in to fund the investigative muscle of police.
Still, progress has been dramatic. Eby says that in March $200,000 in suspicious cash transactions were recorded, which he said is 100th of what it once was. That means the casinos are paying the province less money.
As a result, the provincial government has had to tighten its belt to make up for the expected $30 million loss in the upcoming fiscal year.
Casinos are not the only avenue for money laundering, said Eby. Other ways include real estate, luxury automobiles and horse racing.
Meanwhile, a new poll indicates a majority of voters in British Columbia believe the provincial government should launch a public inquiry into the causes behind the massive international money laundering uncovered in 2017 at B.C. Lottery Corp. casinos in and around Vancouver.
The Research Co. survey asked 800 adults what measures they would support to tackle casino money laundering. The results showed 48 percent of respondents would support a ban on high-limit table games, while a much larger number, 67 percent, also favor regulations requiring gamblers to declare the source of any cash over $10,000 deposited at a casino.
To the question whether they would support a public inquiry, three out of four respondents said yes.
“I think there is an appetite to find out who is responsible and to look at the political system,” said Mario Canseco, who conducted the poll. “For some of the things we learned in the reports, there has to be a system in place that allows people to exploit the situation. People want to look at the chain of command involved in setting out guidelines for gaming in B.C.”
The poll showed that the public closely followed news reports on the scandal, in which it’s alleged that suspected drug cash was laundered through international VIP gamblers and high-limit betting rooms.
Revelations that chip purchases of $500,000 with no known source of funds were occurring and gamblers were carrying cash into Vancouver casinos in hockey bags apparently grabbed the attention of “voters of all stripes,” Canseco said.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is still investigating one major case with suspected connections to international organized crime groups and VIP gamblers recruited from China and Macau. In a separate case, the RCMP announced charges and the pending deportation of a foreign high roller with links to River Rock Casino, Las Vegas, Macau, China and Australia, where the gambler was suspected of laundering about $850 million through casinos.
In response to calls for a public inquiry, Attorney General David Eby has so far argued that a report from his independent reviewer, a former high-level RCMP officer, should be sufficient to tackle the problems.
The report is expected to be released this summer.
