Former RCMP deputy commissioner Peter German’s report into money laundering in the province’s casinos is ground-breaking but also deeply disturbing. It confirms why people are losing faith in the ability of public institutions to safeguard our interests. There has rightly been much talk and focus on the former Liberal government and its failure to address a crime epidemic that many sources warned them about. Less attention has been trained on the police and their ineffectiveness in this sorry drama.
It was evident as far back as 2012 that there were bad things happening inside B.C. casinos, and the River Rock in particular. And in that regard, one passage in Mr. German’s analysis stands out. In it, he’s describing how investigators inside the government’s gaming enforcement branch and officials with the B.C. Lottery Corp., were growing skeptical that efforts to thwart money laundering were actually working.
One agent inside the gaming enforcement branch described in a memo at the time how the River Rock’s VIP room was “full of facilitators,” including inside senior management. What did that mean? It meant they were helping bad guys launder money by knowingly turning a blind eye to their activity. They even stopped reporting suspicious transactions under $50,000.
“In the investigator’s opinion,” Mr. German’s report read, “the matter reached a head in 2012 when the River Rock accepted $100,000 in $20 bills from a patron, who used $3,000 in chips from his pocket to play and then cashed out.” In less time than it takes to run to the store for milk, this guy had cleaned $100,000 in dirty money.
The same guy returned the next day with another $100,000 to launder. And he did. It is now known that no – zero, zilch, nada – transaction was refused by the B.C. Lottery Corp. and its casinos before 2015 despite what was going on. How is that possible?
Many, including myself, have asked: Where was the provincial government? Why wasn’t the solicitor-general at the time, Rich Coleman, all over this? Why wasn’t this issue an urgent priority for the Liberal cabinet of the day? People could see what was going on. These suspicious transactions were being captured on video. And yet, nothing was done.
But at the same time we should ask: Where were the police? People knew years ago that bad guys were showing up at casinos with bags full of illegally obtained money looking to legitimize it. Why weren’t any of these people being arrested and thrown in jail? Instead, this money was allowed to circulate throughout the broader economy and used to begin a horrible escalation in real estate prices and ignite an opioid crisis.
Nice work, police.
The fact that this breakdown by law enforcement, and the RCMP in particular, is underplayed in this report is concerning. And one has to ask the question: did Mr. German let the force off easy because of his association with it?
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