The jaw-dropping background information in an RCMP news release this week heightens the anticipation over Attorney General David Eby’s next move against the rampant money-laundering at some B.C. casinos.
Police announced the detention two weeks earlier of an alleged international money-launderer who was temporarily residing at River Rock Casino in Richmond. He had $75,000 cash on him, which is chump change compared to some of the amounts noted in the barrage of recent news stories about money-laundering there.
The shocker is in the recounting of his activities elsewhere. Dan Bui Shun Jin is suspected of laundering $855 million through Australian casinos. He’s wanted for fraud in a million-dollar case in Nevada and is the subject of investigations in Australia, Macau and Singapore.
The dollar value listed by police would put him in the top ranks of the money-laundering racket. His presence at the Richmond laundromat-cum-casino appears to confirm yet again the widespread impression that B.C. has a serious problem. And it is unlikely to be cleared up with Jin’s detention. (He’s being held pending a deportation hearing.)
It took four government agencies and the casino surveillance unit to corral the suspect. The news release sums up an impressive bit of police work involving a woman who picked up $25,000 in cash in a Las Vegas parking lot, hopped a flight to Vancouver and delivered it to Jin at the River Rock. The authorities had a search warrant ready and nabbed him.
There is mention of “securing our borders,” “strong partnerships with other investigative organizations” and “eliminating opportunities for criminal entities to operate.”
But it leaves the nagging impression that authorities caught just one big fish while schools of other high rollers gambling with dirty money are routinely swimming through holes in the B.C. nets. That’s the impression Eby developed as an opposition critic. It intensified when he was sworn in as attorney general last July.
He said late last year that he was stunned at his first briefing on the topic. An official told him at the outset: “I think we are going to blow your mind.”
They did. They outlined serious large-scale, trans-national laundering of the proceeds of crime in B.C. casinos that is so entrenched it is referred to as “the Vancouver model.”
Eby subsequently released a report suppressed by the previous B.C. Liberal government that included one riveting finding. In just one month in 2015, River Rock accepted $13.5 million in $20 bills, mostly from “high-roller Asian VIP clients.”
He commissioned an independent expert to design a response to what, by then, was established through Vancouver media reporting as a full-blown problem. Peter German, a former top Mountie and national expert on proceeds of crime and money-laundering, was appointed last September.
Two interim recommendations were released by March. One of them gives a hint at how lax enforcement activity was. German said investigators should be on shift 24-7 at the busier casinos. They were apparently keeping 9-to-5 office hours previously, which would be the least likely time to monitor suspicious activity.
Eby has maintained two clear positions on money-laundering. The first is that the previous government did next to nothing as the problem got worse, so B.C.’s capacity to deal with it is degraded.
The second is that he and the government are determined to do something about it. The legislative package this spring included whistleblower legislation, partly as a result of findings to date about money-laundering.
All that tough talk comes with a cost. Beefing up enforcement will cost big bucks. And putting real limits on cash buy-ins at casinos will cost millions more. The February budget projects a $30-million drop in gambling revenue if money-laundering is tackled with such measures.
Eby said it’s the cost of restoring B.C.’s international reputation, and the government is willing to pay it.
The next move will be the release of German’s full report. It is 250 pages, with 48 recommendations and it was delivered to Eby on April 3. Eby was juggling the referendum on changing the voting system while digesting the report, but that work is now mostly done. Release is expected soon.
When he was driving the point home last December about the extent of the problem, he said: “There is more to come.”
Brace yourself.
