B.C. money laundering inquiry will release final report on Wednesday after hearing from 199 witnesses
Premier John Horgan appointed Cullen in May 2019 to lead the inquiry after several reports determined billions of dollars linked to organized crime and the drug trade had affected B.C.'s gaming sector and the real estate and luxury vehicle markets.
Jun 10, 2022
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-money-laundering-inquiry-report-set-for-release-1.6485473
In his testimony, David Eby said that the money laundering problem in British Columbia was so notorious that it was known among international intelligence groups as “the Vancouver model”.
In this model, gamblers, usually from China, who do not have cash, take money from gangsters and deposit them into a casino – these are the proceeds of gang crime, often in amounts as high as hundreds of thousands of dollars. The gambler then transfers money from his Chinese bank account to a bank account under the control of the gang. The illicit cash he took from the gangsters is taken into the casino, a FINTRAC reporting form is completed, and the gambler is free to buy chips, gamble, and then, cash out.
A series of media reports in the past few weeks suggested that there was a clear relation between shady transactions, crime proceeds and the skyrocketing housing market around Vancouver and in the Lower Mainland, in particular.
Due to the high value of luxury cars and pleasure craft, these items are excellent for storing illegal cash and reintroducing it to the legitimate economy. It turns out that multiple sectors in British Columbia have been affected by money laundering activities. International crime gangs have been targeting Vancouver’s economy, flooding it with proceeds from drug sales and other criminal activity. According to Eby, this continued for many years and is probably happening right now. Whether authorities will be capable of breaking that cycle and clearing Canada’s reputation remains to be seen.
https://www.casinoreports.ca/2018/05/01/how-suspicious-transactions-in-british-columbia-casinos-turned-into-canadas-biggest-money-laundering-scandal/
Vancouver was the first place to experience the tidal wave of Chinese cash. Now the city is leading efforts to stop it.
The black coupe pulled up outside the Starlight Casino in a suburb of Vancouver. The driver got out, greeted a man in a red shirt, and pulled two bulging white plastic bags from the trunk. He led the way into an empty noodle shop next door, where he handed over the bags before returning to the car. The man in the red shirt took the bags into the casino, through a cavernous glass lobby with signs in English and Mandarin. At a cashier’s desk, he opened one of the bags to present his cargo: thousands of green Canadian $20 bills, bound into loose bricks with yellow plastic bands.
The cashier’s counting machine would need to run continuously for more than 10 minutes to riffle through all the notes, which came to more than C$250,000 ($192,000). Converted into chips that could be cashed out later, whether or not they’d been wagered at the tables, the money would be spendable anywhere in Canada, unimpeded by questions of provenance.
One academic terms the process “the Vancouver model”: a seamy mingling of clean and dirty cash in casinos, real estate, and luxury goods made possible by historic ties to China and by Canada’s lax record of fighting financial crime.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-20/vancouver-is-drowning-in-chinese-money