VANCOUVER—As the province’s attorney general waits for a report on money laundering in real estate, David Eby is pressing for the bulk of new federal resources to fight financial crime to be devoted to British Columbia.

In a press conference following his meeting with Bill Blair, federal minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction, Eby said he also pressed for federal co-operation if the province holds a public inquiry into how B.C. casinos became laundromats for potentially billions in dirty money.

Blair said he would take that request back to Ottawa and highlighted a number of new commitments in the federal budget. On March 19, the federal government tabled a budget that committed to creating a multi-agency task force to combat money laundering and developing a centre of expertise on financial crime to help track dirty money.

The government also promised to amend the Criminal Code to allow a person’s recklessness with the origin of their money to contribute to a money-laundering case against them.

“Many of the measures brought forward in Budget 2019 are improvements in intelligence gathering, strengthening the ability of Fintrac to identify these irregular transactions,” Blair said, referencing Canada’s financial intelligence unit.

Changing the Criminal Code should help prosecutors bring cases of money laundering to trial, he said.

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“One of the difficulties prosecutors have had is proving the criminal intent,” Blair said. “Many of the actors in the money-laundering activity, it’s been very difficult to identify that they had precise knowledge of the criminal origins of these proceeds.”

B.C.’s attempts to crack down on the problem suffered a blow in November 2018, when federal prosecutors stayed the charges in a large money-laundering investigation that involved casinos in the Lower Mainland, according to media reports.

In June 2018, former RCMP commissioner Peter German submitted his report on money laundering in B.C. casinos, which showed criminals ran rampant for years despite warnings from whistleblowers and the provincial casino regulator.

German will submit a second report, this one focusing on B.C.’s real-estate sector, on March 31. It will then be up to the attorney general to decide whether to publicly release the report.

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While many British Columbians have been calling on the province to strike a public inquiry to uncover just what went wrong for so long, Eby said the government has waited because an inquiry could put several active investigations at risk.

“The way I understand the requests of many British Columbians for a public inquiry is that it’s a request for political accountability,” Eby said, “for decisions that were made in British Columbia that related to the explosion in money laundering and our earning an international reputation for being a centre for money laundering.”

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