Former RCMP officers call on Ontario to get to the bottom of $372M in suspicious casino transactions
CTV
Despite recent measures taken to crack down on suspicious transactions, records show the dollar value of the suspicious transactions has actually increased risen to levels higher than those of before the pandemic.
Two former RCMP officers are calling on the province to conduct a thorough investigation into the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of suspicious transactions flowing through Ontario’s casinos every year.
Despite measures taken in recent years to crack down on suspicious transactions, records show the dollar value of the suspicious transactions has actually increased risen to levels higher than those of before the pandemic.
“My guess is that in many of these cases when you’re seeing large sums of money like this, there are illicit funds,” Cal Chrustie, a former RCMP investigator that dealt with complex cases involving money laundering and transnational crime, said.
“The numbers are significant, but until you drill down to each transaction with an in-depth investigation, it’s very hard to tell,” he said.
Ontario regulators introduced new rules requiring casinos to maintain logs on anyone doing more than $3,000 worth of business in a single transaction, ascertain the source of funds, and watch for indicators of money laundering. If signs of laundering are detected, casinos refuse to take the money at all.
The rules came into effect at the beginning of 2022, a year when suspicious cash transactions rose to higher than pre-pandemic levels.
In 2019, there were $334 million in suspicious transactions, according to records provided through a freedom of information request. By 2022, that had risen by $38 million to $372 million — or by more than $1 million a day.
