Article content

More than 10 years after the $1,000 bill disappeared from circulation 946,043 of them are still out there, somewhere.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or The hunt for Canada's $1,000 bills: There are nearly a million left, most in the hands of criminal elites Back to video

The whereabouts of almost $1-billion worth of the banknotes is a mystery rekindled this month at Quebec’s corruption probe when a witness spoke of a safe over-stuffed with cash, including $1,000 notes, inside a political office.

Retired on May 12, 2000, for being mostly used in criminal transactions, any $1,000 note deposited at a bank is destroyed, although the bills — nicknamed “pinkies” by gangsters because of the pinkish-purple ink — remain legal tender.

Money-laundering experts believe most of the missing bills continue to circulate among criminal elites who use them to pay large debts, with the recipient, in turn, using them to pay their own debts with only a portion of the notes bleeding off into the legitimate banking system.

“They are used now to pay off IOUs, not as traditional cash. They are used for buying and selling but not for cashing, because they know if they cash them, it is traceable,” said Jeffrey Robinson, a New York-based author of several landmark books on money laundering.

“They keep paying with them, over and over, and it’s only the last guy in line who has to worry about cashing them.”