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Mr. Docherty then turned to the Federal Court of Appeal.

He said the money was from an inheritance that he and his daughter used in their wild mushroom business, which handled transactions in cash, and he was using it to buy property abroad. He argued he wasn’t hiding the money, only purposely trying to stay below the reporting limit.

Further, he said, the government was biased toward him because he has a criminal conviction from 1993.

The government argued there are reasonable grounds to believe the money was criminal profit.

“Smuggling cash across international borders is a strong indicator that the funds are proceeds of crime,” the government argued; “$10,000 was a very high threshold; most people did not have, let alone carry, this amount.”

‘$10,000 was a very high threshold; most people did not have, let alone carry, this amount’

Not helping his case was the fact that Mr. Docherty had little in the way of business records to prove the origins of the cash.

“Individuals are free to arrange their affairs so as to leave the smallest possible financial footprint,” wrote Justice J.D. Denis Pelletier, on behalf of the panel of appellate judges, last week. “The disadvantage of doing so is that when a question arises as to the source of large amounts of cash found in their possession, they have very few means of establishing the legitimacy of those funds.

“In the context of the issues sought to be addressed by the act — money laundering and the financing of terrorism — the government is entitled to ask for a reasonable explanation of the source of currency in excess of the prescribed limit found on persons leaving Canada.

“In this case, Mr. Docherty’s explanations were unverifiable and, as such, amounted to no explanation at all,” the court ruled in dismissing his appeal.

Mr. Docherty could not be reached for comment.

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