Money-transfer business facing laundering charges
Criminal charges have been laid against Silver International Investment, a money-transfer business that RCMP allege was involved in money laundering, had ties to underground banking and used suspected drug cash to fund Chinese VIP gamblers in B.C. casinos.
During the RCMP’s so-called E-Pirate probe, Mounties allege they uncovered $500 million-plus from a Richmond money-laundering service that they said handled up to $1.5 million a day.
“The Public Prosecution Service of Canada can confirm that charges have been laid against Caixuan Qin, Jian Jun Zhu, and Silver International Investments Ltd. in relation to Project E-Pirate,” spokeswoman Nathalie Houle said Wednesday in an email. “We have no other information to provide at this time.”
RCMP and B.C. government documents obtained through freedom of information allege organized criminals used Silver as an illegal bank to wash drug money. According to the allegations, a network of “private lenders” in Richmond lent cash from Silver to VIP gamblers recruited from China. These high-rollers visited B.C. for gambling junkets, according to these allegations, and received hockey bags full of cash.
Officials allege these loans allowed wealthy gamblers to get money in Canada, bypassing China’s tight capital-export controls, and pay back the loan through underground banks in China. The VIPs were able to buy betting chips with street-cash $20 bills, mostly at Richmond’s River Rock Casino, and later cash out with $100 bills more suitable for investment in B.C., an audit by B.C.’s gaming enforcement policy branch alleges.
According to court records, Qin, born in 1984, and Zhu, born in 1975, face five counts, including laundering proceeds of a crime, possession of property obtained by crime and failing to ascertain the identity of a client. Silver International faces the same five counts.
The accused are scheduled for a first appearance in Richmond provincial court Oct. 30. Matthew Nathanson, lawyer for Silver International, did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Corporate records say Caixuan Qin is the director of Silver International. Qin’s mailing address for Silver is an apartment unit in Richmond. Qin is not the owner of the apartment, according to title documents. Caixuan Qin is listed as owner of a $2.5-million home in south Vancouver.
Silver, which was incorporated in 2014, operated in a unit of an office complex at 5811 Cooney Rd. in Richmond. Little else can be found about the company in B.C. registry documents.
In late August, at a Vancouver conference attended by law enforcement officials, RCMP Insp. Bruce Ward outlined the details of E-Pirate. The investigation started with surveillance of gambling and cash drops at River Rock Casino, documents say, which led to Silver’s cash house, about a 10-minute drive away.
Ward said RCMP surveillance identified 40 different organizations linked to Asian organized groups dealing cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. Gangsters were delivering “suitcases laden with cash” to Silver’s cash house.
At Silver, dealers could drop off $100,000 in cash in a suitcase, Ward said, and within minutes a credit for $95,000 would appear in a Chinese bank after a five per cent fee was taken.
“The primary target that led us there was a person that is involved in generating ‘whales’ ... these highend gamblers,” Ward said. “His expertise is going over and working in Macau, identifying rich Chinese businessmen that would go to Macau and he was attracting them to Canada to gamble. He would use Silver International as a bank account.”
Describing a typical cash drop, Ward said: “They would put $100,000 into a hockey bag, show up at the casino and give (the VIP gambler) $100,000 ... the loaning out would go to Chinese offshore gamblers coming into Canada.”
In a raid on Silver International’s office in October 2015, civil forfeiture documents allege, Mounties seized over $2 million in mostly $20 bills, plus ledgers and daily transaction records. Ledgers suggest that in one year Silver laundered $220 million in cash in B.C. and sent over $300 million offshore, according to Ward.
B.C. gaming enforcement branch documents say information revealed by the RCMP’s investigation into Silver and funding of gamblers at River Rock Casino led them to suspect funds are tied to “transnational drug trafficking ... (that) could have a potentially devastating impact on the casino industry.”
A 2016 B.C. gaming enforcement branch audit alleged River Rock Casino staff knowingly accepted millions in suspicious cash that was provided to VIP gamblers by lenders who were banned from B.C. casinos, Postmedia has reported.
On Wednesday, Chuck Keeling, an executive with River Rock’s operator Great Canadian Gaming Corp., said he was not aware of charges laid in the E-Pirate investigation and was not able to comment.