The B.C. government is preparing to unveil a new strategy for dealing with money laundering in casinos more than seven years after it shut down the province’s integrated illegal gaming enforcement team, Finance Minister Mike de Jong said on Monday.
Facing calls from the NDP to restore that unit, de Jong disclosed in the B.C. legislature that he and Attorney General Suzanne Anton met with the RCMP last fall about developing a new “co-ordinated enforcement approach” to the issue.
De Jong said the government is now in the process of finalizing an approach that will tackle money laundering “in ways, quite frankly, that the previous organization … never did.”
The government scrapped its 12-member integrated gaming enforcement team in 2009. Housing Minister Rich Coleman, who was then the minister responsible for the B.C. Lottery Corporation, said at the time that the team “just, frankly, didn’t work.”
NDP critic David Eby said Monday that it’s clear now that the Liberal government made a mistake when it scrapped the integrated team to save about $1 million.
“Probably they realized [the mistake] a couple of years ago when the number of suspicious cash transactions at casinos continued to escalate,” he said. “I just don’t understand why they have taken so long to address the mistake.”
Eby said the cost of a dedicated police unit pales in comparison to the increases in gambling revenues and rising amounts government spends advertising gambling.
“Asking for just around $1 million for a casino policing team is a relatively small amount of money,” he said. “It seems very easy to fix; I don’t understand why they’re so reluctant to do it.”
De Jong offered few details Monday of the new co-ordinated approach except to say that it will involve the gaming policy and enforcement branch, the RCMP and the B.C. Lottery Corp.
“We take very seriously the obligation that we have to British Columbians to ensure that the activities that take place within regulated and lawful gaming establishments are being conducted with proceeds that are not — I repeat: not — the result of criminal activity,” he said.
De Jong’s office later released copies of his letters to the RCMP and B.C. Lottery Corporation chairman Bud Smith last October.
In the letter to Smith, de Jong acknowledged that problems persist despite progress made through the government’s anti-money-laundering strategy.
“I am advised that large and suspicious cash transactions remain prevalent,” he wrote to Smith.
“This situation must be addressed.”
De Jong and Anton stated in their letter to the RCMP that the co-ordinated approach to money laundering would enforce federal and provincial laws “within the legal and illegal gaming sectors.”
“This approach would provide strategic enforcement that is targeted, proactive and designed for maximum deterrence of suspicious activities to ensure the gaming industry is conducted with integrity and free from criminal activity,” the letter said.
