The office of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau only recently learned of the gambling problem that one of his former up and coming MPs Raj Grewal, had before resigning abruptly two weeks ago.
Grewal issued a video in which he resigned from the party caucus and admitted to a gambling addiction. He also said he is considering resigning from his office as MP.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police had, during the course of a wide-ranging investigation of money-laundering come up across the MP’s extensive activities at several casinos near Parliament. The Mounties had also been investigating Grewal in connection to Trudeau’s trip to India earlier this year, when Grewal invited someone who had been paying him for legal services to go along on the junket.
The prime minister told a press conference that he knew about that investigation but wasn’t aware of the MP’s gambling addiction. “On Wednesday of last week, I was apprised of Mr. Grewal’s gambling problem…. I understand my office became aware of that within a day or so of briefing me,” he said.
In his video Grewal confessed to playing at local casinos, where he went into debt for millions of dollars playing blackjack. On an average sitting, I would spend between 15 to 30 minutes at a table, and I either won a lot of money, which made me continue to chase wins, or I lost a significant amount of money, which threw me into complete despair,” he said.
