The way most people look forward to summer blockbusters, Canada’s financial crime nerds have eagerly awaited the Cullen Commission’s final report. Three years in the making, the 1,832-page document provides an in-depth look at British Columbia’s massive money laundering problem and what can be done to fix it.
While the public inquiry focused on B.C. –– a province where criminals were all but free to habitually wash hockey bags full of dirty cash through their casinos and McMansions for unemployed students –– its findings and recommendations are relevant across the country. Money laundering is so prevalent in the Great White North, it’s internationally known as “snow washing.”
The Cullen report confirms an astronomical amount of illicit money travels through B.C. alone. In one case, a single money services business laundered more than $220 million per year. “While it is not possible to put a precise figure on the volume of illicit funds… the available evidence shows that the figure is very large (with estimates in the billions of dollars).
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