In 2012, an RCMP investigation reported that Richmond’s River Rock Casino and New Westminster’s Starlight Casino “are a very significant source of money-laundering activity, using wealthy People’s Republic of China gamblers as willing pawns in their activity.”
The confidential RCMP document that makes this explosive allegation — which has not previously been reported on — appears to be the most direct evidence cited in British Columbia’s provincial money-laundering inquiry: that specific B.C. government casinos were “using” foreign high rollers in transnational money-laundering schemes.
This week, on the final days of the two-year Cullen Commission, lawyers representing the federal government cited records, including this “Investigational Planning” document, to counter closing arguments by lawyers representing River Rock owner Great Canadian Gaming and Starlight owner Gateway Casinos.
The RCMP document provides shocking new details about undercover operations targeting high-end patrons and loan sharks operating at the two casinos. And it highlights the thorny questions that commissioner Austin Cullen now must consider in his mammoth task of sifting through some 70,000 pages of evidence and determining which of the commission’s 198 witnesses is telling the truth and whether corruption allowed money laundering to continue in B.C. casinos and real estate investment.
Read more at https://globalnews.ca/news/8277350/bc-casinos-money-laundering-cullen-commission-closing-arguments/
