Silence in E-Pirate case ‘astonishing,’ crime expert says
Federal prosecutors and the RCMP should provide at least some details on why charges were stayed in B.C.’s biggest money laundering case, a criminology expert said Thursday.
“RCMP secrecy is just astonishing to my mind. I understand the need to protect the integrity of these investigations … but you don’t go into a hole in the ground and say, ‘Sorry, I am not going to talk to you at all,’ ” said Simon Fraser University criminology professor Rob Gordon.
When information is completely shut down then questions get raised, said Gordon.
He acknowledged there are good reasons to hold some information back but there should be a way to provide some details without having a negative effect on any continuing investigation.
Gordon also noted there was little doubt the federal prosecutor and RCMP know why charges have been stayed, despite a pledge by the RCMP to launch an internal full-scale review “to understand its activities which contributed to this stay.”
In response to questions from The Vancouver Sun, the Public Prosecution Service of Canada and the RCMP would not say explicitly why the charges were stayed.
And on Thursday, the federal government declined to comment on the stayed charges in the E-Pirate investigation that RCMP say was launched in the spring of 2015 into an alleged organized crime group believed to be laundering large amounts of cash through British Columbia casinos.
In a written response, Marie-Emmanuelle Cadieux, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction office of Bill Blair, said: “We remain committed to combating organized crime in all its forms … We cannot comment further on an ongoing investigation.”
B.C. Attorney General David Eby weighed in Wednesday after learning in The Sun the charges were stayed, saying there was an “urgent” need to find out why this happened and how to fix it, which would need the co-operation of the federal government.
Last week in Richmond provincial court, charges were stayed by the Crown on money laundering the proceeds of crime, possession of property obtained by crime and three counts of failing to ascertain the identity of a client against Silver International Investments Ltd., Caixuan Qin (born 1984) and Jain Jun Zhu (born 1975).
These were the only criminal charges related to the E-Pirate investigation, where the Mounties allege they uncovered more than $500 million from a Richmond money-laundering service they said handled up to $1.5 million a day.
A five-week trial had been scheduled for Qin, Zhu and Silver International stretching from January to April in 2019.
Gordon, the SFU criminologist, noted that in money laundering cases you have to prove the proceeds came from crime, which he noted is “hellishly hard.”
Gordon said there were a number of reasons that money laundering charges might be stayed, including that witnesses had decided not to testify or had disappeared; key forensic evidence had evaporated; or somebody had cut a deal to provide further information or co-operation with respect to a much larger issue.
In a rolling Postmedia investigation published last year, RCMP and B.C. government documents obtained through freedom-of-information allege that organized criminals used Silver International as an illegal bank to wash drug money.