Two money laundering whistleblowers say they are disappointed with the findings of the investigation into widespread crime and possible links to corruption in British Columbia.
The Cullen Commission’s final report, released on Wednesday, delved into the organized crime cash that was leaking through the province’s casinos, the real estate industry and elsewhere.
While concluding that the BC government, police, and the federal anti-money laundering agency did not do enough to stop the crime, the 1,800-page report found no evidence of corruption. The commission identified “astonishing” levels of money laundering and what Cullen himself described as a “lack of will” to deal with it.
“People have to go to jail for this,” Fred Pinnock, a former commander of the RCMP’s illegal gambling task force, told Global News.
“It has been my hope that there will be support for criminal investigations resulting from this exercise. I do not see this happening and I do not see the bad actors who led this nightmare of money laundering to be responsible in as they should be ”.
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Read more: Public investigation into money laundering finds “no evidence” of political corruption in BC
Pinnock led BC’s integrated illegal gambling enforcement team, which oversees illegal casinos, from 2005 to 2008. He told committee hearings that he had repeatedly expressed the need to extended the mandate of the unit to the BC Lottery Corporation casinos and presented a business argument for the unit to attack organized crime in government casinos.
There was little interest in his idea, he said in a previous interview, and RCMP leaders set him aside and withdrew. His unit was disbanded by the BC Liberals in 2009.
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In an exclusive interview on Thursday, Pinnock said he was “comforted” to learn that, years after first speaking in 2006, others would come to share his views on the scope of the problem.
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“It motivated me nothing more than the desire to contribute more to public safety by volunteering to be a witness or, hopefully, a nod to the commission,” he said.
“I hope history proves that the public has been well served by her. The case is still pending for me.”
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Although formal participants in the investigation were given legal representation to protect the risk of their reputation, Pinnock said he did not have a fully-funded legal adviser as the complainant who testified. Had there been, he said, there would have been a more rigorous interrogation of the “bad actors” and possibly “forests full of additional evidence” that the commissioner could have considered.
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“It simply came to our notice then. It felt like we were in the ring with one hand tied behind our back, “he said.
“I did my best to identify possible avenues for the commission to find out who was in charge, and I was surprised by the line of questions on several occasions.”
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Another complainant, Muriel LaBine, said she supported the commission’s 101 recommendations, but thought some might be difficult to implement.
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The investigation called on the province to establish an independent commissioner to focus on the fight against money laundering, amend the Mortgage Brokers Act and the Real Estate Services Regulations, and force casinos to lower the threshold to $ 3,000. to require proof of a player’s background source.
“It got shorter when there was no more talk about the revenue that casinos get and how the people in charge of the casinos, how that affected their revenue,” said LaBine, who worked as a distributor supervisor at nineties. for the Great Canadian Gaming Casino in Richmond.
“Casino executives have stock options, and when revenue increases, shares increase [and] they can expand more ”.
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LaBine said it would see young men – usurers, she said – take customers with them and pass baccarat players’ packages on $ 20 bills and casino chips. He thought that crumpled paper money, wrapped in rubber bands, was not likely from a bank.
In 2019, it was made public, sharing its handwritten diary of casino notes and BC Gaming Commission revenue documents that seemed to record the exact time when Macau-style money laundering exploded in the province. .
The Cullen Commission’s final report painted a similar picture, depicting people arriving at Vancouver area casinos with large bags of cash, usually on $ 20 bills. He also reported a new figure: BC casinos accepted $ 1.2 billion in cash transactions of $ 10,000 or more in 2014 alone.
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Labinet said finding any evidence of corruption was a “shock,” given how long money laundering has been a problem, and how few successive BC governments and law enforcement agencies have been able to crack it down. . He called the “lack of will” described by Cullen “nonsense” and a “ridiculous statement.”
“I felt betrayed,” he said in an interview. “That it lasts for 20 years and they’ve turned a blind eye to it? It’s very, very difficult to reconcile with that: there’s no reward somewhere along the line.”
LaBine also said that political donations to government parties from casino owners, service providers and staff should have been closely monitored.
“We can’t allow this to happen again,” he said. “We will put safeguards, we will put blockades, that does not mean that the bad guys will not find a way to avoid the blockades, so we must be vigilant and pay attention.”
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The RCMP said in a statement that it was reviewing Cullen’s report and was fully involved in the investigation.
BC Attorney General David Eby has said he is confident his Ottawa colleagues would be disappointed by the failures of the federal money laundering regime described in the report. The provincial government will work on the recommended reforms, he added.
– with archives of Am Cooper and The Canadian Press
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