SHOW US THE MONEY
Investigations into laundering in B.C. lack hard evidence and specific details
Cabinet ministers Carole James and David Eby took to the platform at the legislature Thursday to again claim the real estate market has been greatly distorted by illicit money laundering.
“Our overheated housing market can attract criminals and people wanting to abuse the system,” said Finance Minister James.
“When these people exploit loopholes, they drive up housing prices and help organized crime and drug dealers. That kind of activity has no place in our province, and we are taking action.”
She then released the findings of a welcome review, urging consolidation among provincial regulators in the real estate and financial sector, as a first start on closing loopholes.
Attorney General Eby for his part launched another review by money-laundering expert Peter German, this time into suspected abuses in real estate, horse racing and the purchase of luxury cars.
The second-phase review, budgeted at $250,000, arose out of recommendations from German in his earlier review of money laundering at casinos, for which he was paid $188,914.
“Our examination of money laundering in casinos uncovered troubling evidence suggesting strongly that dirty money is circulating in other places in our communities,” said Eby.
But when pressed for specifics, Eby turned vague.
One of the most widely reported numbers from the first German report was a guesstimate that $100 million had been laundered through B.C. casinos over a decade, meaning about $10 million a year.
But real estate sales in Metro Vancouver amount to about $50 billion a year. Could $10 million in dirty money significantly distort a market 5,000 times larger?
“Good question,” said Eby, when I put it to him Thursday. “That is exactly the question we’re asking. … We don’t know yet the extent of criminal activity that may be occurring in these sectors, but we have no intent of ignoring the many warning signs.”
The question was one of 21 posed by veteran journalist Ng Weng Hoong in the Georgia Straight back in July. Others raised concerns about the impact of the allegations on the Chinese community.
“The focus of the report, together with Mr. Eby’s public pronouncements on Chinese money laundering, has cast a shadow over Metro Vancouver’s Chinese community as potential conduits for dirty money,” he wrote.
“Was B.C. without gangs, money laundering and drug trafficking before the arrival of Chinese gamblers?”
Good questions deserving answers. But Eby has yet to respond to any of them, according to Straight editor Charlie Smith.
I was also struck Thursday by some lingering questions from a piece columnist Ian Mulgrew wrote in The Vancouver Sun following the late June release of the first German report.
“German report offers rhetoric instead of accountability,” was the headline on what Mulgrew characterized as “a political whitewash.”
“The police didn’t do their job, the government’s gaming and policy-enforcement branch didn’t do its job, the B.C. Lottery Corp. didn’t do its job, government officials and politicians didn’t do their job. But no one is being named or blamed,” Mulgrew wrote.
He noted, too, that amid the flurry of finger-pointing, German had not addressed his own role as deputy RCMP commissioner for Western Canada through part of the period when the money-laundering machinery was working flat out. “Nowhere in his report does he offer a personal perspective or explain what role he played while this social cancer metastasized,” Mulgrew wrote.
“He wasn’t a disinterested observer.”
By way of defence cum excuse, Eby said German was on a factfinding mission, not an exercise in naming names and placing blame. He repeated that line Thursday regarding Phase 2.
Still, Eby held out the possibility that after the second phase is completed next March, the New Democrats might have finally assembled enough reasons for the cabinet to order a full-blown public inquiry into money laundering.
He’s held out that possibility for months as well, perhaps as a sop to party supporters who ( judging from their comments on social media) seem to believe it would result in prominent B.C. Liberals being led off in chains.
Eby, a lawyer, and still a civil libertarian last time I checked his resume, knows very well that a public inquiry cannot lay criminal charges. Even placing blame is challenging under guidelines laid down by the courts.
But a public inquiry could get in the way of a police investigation, which is why the inquiry would probably have to be put on hold.
Lastly, Eby was asked about his earlier call for the B.C. Liberals to waive cabinet confidentiality on documents from their time in office related to money laundering.
He said public servants were reviewing the cabinet record and drawing up a list of perhaps relevant documents. Meaning when Eby issued the call, he had no idea if such documents existed.
None of which says that money laundering is not a problem in B.C. or that the Liberals were diligent in policing it. But Eby has been playing politics with the “get to the bottom of it” vow long enough.
It is time for him and his highly paid investigator to identify the actual dollar transactions that could be the basis for criminal charges and/or firings.
Instead, when challenged for specifics Thursday he replied, “we know the money has gone somewhere.”
The money has gone somewhere. This from an attorney general who says he’s been working on the case since taking office 14 months ago.
Not exactly Hercule Poirot, is he?
A public inquiry could get in the way of a police investigation, which is why the inquiry would probably have to be put on hold.