A Richmond man who pleaded guilty in the U.S. to aiding the Sinaloa cartel and other international organized crime groups hid his illicit cash in bank accounts of shell companies he registered with the B.C. government.

Vincent Ramos had at least 10 other companies set up on top of Phantom Secure, the B.C.-registered entity he used to sell encrypted devices to criminal organizations around the world for a decade.

The U.S. government says he laundered $80 million earned enabling high-level criminals to hide drug deals and murder plots through Blackberries he promised could be instantly wiped clean to evade police.

Six of Ramos’s companies were set up through the B.C. Finance Ministry’s corporate registry between 2005 and 2017, according to a Vancouver Sun investigation.

In some of the cases, Ramos hired a law firm and then listed his corporation’s address as his lawyer’s office.

With at least two of his companies, his longtime accountant Ash Katey was the registering party, according to documents obtained by Postmedia.

Katey, who wrote a reference letter to support Ramos’s bail application after his arrest last year, declined to comment.

“I am about to retire from my profession and do not want to be bothered,” Katey said in an email this week when asked about his role in the two companies.

With most of Ramos’s B.C. companies, he listed a Richmond UPS office on Westminster Highway as his personal address — not the Seagrave Road home in Richmond he shared with his family until it was recently sold as part of a U.S. forfeiture order.

Critics say the ease with which Canadian companies can be set up and registered by organized criminals is troubling.

“I think what this file does is it really demonstrate that without the mandatory requirements of knowing who the individuals are that are opening companies up, we are creating vehicles for money laundering and this one really typifies it,” said Garry Clement, a former RCMP superintendent who served as national director of the proceeds of crime program and now heads his own anti-money laundering consulting firm.

He said Canada needs a law similar to the American Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, under which Ramos was charged and pleaded guilty last fall. He is to be sentenced in San Diego later this month.

“Sadly we don’t have a RICO-type statute in this country or we would see more criminal forfeitures than we do,” Clement said. “The (Americans) are able to go after the assets in a big way.”

He said organized criminals need legally registered companies so that they can look legitimate when they go to financial institutions to open accounts.

“And all of a sudden now, they have got this great vehicle,” he said.

James Cohen, executive director of the non-profit anticorruption agency Transparency International Canada, agreed.

He said Canada needs a national searchable corporate registry — like one already operational in the U.K., to help tackle misuse of legal corporations by organized crime.

Right now, it’s “incredibly easy to set up a company” in Canada, he said.

“People do take advantage of that, set up multiple fronts.”

The British registry requires both public and private businesses “to have a certain degree of business-level information be available to the public,” he said. “That transparency is meant to dissuade criminals from opening accounts.”

The European Union is set to have a similar registry operational by 2021.

“Here in Canada there is going to be discussion about what steps to take soon for a Pan-Canadian system,” Cohen said, adding that the more countries that adopt a similar public registry, the better.

“Money is global — and we can’t look at this issue as just a domestic issue.”

Finance Minister Carole James said in an emailed statement Thursday that B.C. is doing everything it can to crack down on money laundering

“Money laundering and other criminal activity have no place in our province — it hurts people, it hurts our communities, and it hurts our economy,” she said.

The government’s new Land Owner Transparency Act, as well as amendments to the Business Corporations Act, will make it easier to determine who’s really behind private companies, she said.

“We need to work together with the federal government and law enforcement to detect, prevent and stamp out money laundering in our province, and that is exactly what our government is doing.”

Ramos incorporated VMD Ventures Ltd in B.C. on April 1, 2005. He then registered Phantom Secure Communications on Jan. 2, 2008. Both listed a downtown Vancouver law firm as corporate offices.

The next company he started was Venon Holdings Inc., incorporating it on Oct. 28, 2009 as his company expanded to the U.S., Australia, Dubai, Panama, Hong Kong and Thailand.

He started 1046597 BC Ltd., on Aug. 20, 2015, again incorporating it through the B.C. Finance Ministry registry in Victoria. Again, after his arrest, his wife replaced him as a director in April 2018.

Also started in 2015 and incorporated in B.C. was SLV Global. Ramos’s name does not show up on the company records, but it is listed in the U.S. court order as having a bank account containing his assets. It was dissolved in June 2018.

Even as U.S. authorities investigated him, Ramos formed another company — 1125580 BC Ltd. — registered on July 7, 2017. Again his wife also replaced him as the sole director after his arrest, but she was then replaced by another party three months later.

Ramos also registered a subsidiary of Phantom Secure in Dublin. In December 2018, a high court there ordered that 500,000 euros in two company bank accounts be seized by the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau.

Other non-B.C. companies that are part of the U.S. forfeiture order against Ramos have bank accounts in the U.S., Hong Kong, China, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

As part of his plea deal last October, Ramos, 41, admitted to leading a criminal enterprise that facilitated international drug smuggling “through the sale and service of encrypted communications devices.”

He also agreed that he and his associates helped distribute cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine to locations in Canada, the U.S., Australia, Mexico, Thailand and Europe.

Ramos isn’t the only major B.C. criminal that has registered companies through the B.C. Finance Ministry.

United Nations gang founder Clay Roueche, who is now serving a 24-year sentence in the U.S. for drug smuggling and money laundering, set up three companies while active in his criminal organization.

The first was 611659 BC Ltd., incorporated on Aug. 1, 2000. The B.C. Corporate Registry dissolved the company on Oct. 26, 2006 for failing to file reports.

Roueche incorporated Unified Money Solutions on June 3, 2003. It was also dissolved years later for failing to file the required reports.

Roueche incorporated a second numbered company — 0711067 BC Ltd. — on Dec. 13, 2004. It was dissolved on June 8, 2008 — three weeks after Roueche was arrested in the U.S.

Roueche was also made a director of his parent’s company, Roueche Enterprises Ltd., on July 7, 2007. That company was dissolved in June 2017 for failing to file reports.

kbolan@postmedia.com

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