Finance Committee on March 8th, 2011

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

What's the magnitude?

[Denis Meunier]

We probably receive about 60 voluntary information records a year from the public on money laundering cases.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Do you refer them or do you do anything with them?

[Denis Meunier]

We will analyze them. We must by law analyze them. We must review them. If we have some transactions that relate to this and we actually reach a threshold, we must disclose them.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

If they said a particular person is evading taxes--and if you look at stuff, you'll find it--but they have no specific information, would you do anything with it?

[Denis Meunier]

Our focus is first on money laundering.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

I understand that. But if they tell you that somebody is evading taxes, would you pass it on to anybody else?

[Denis Meunier]

No, we would have to analyze it first.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

But you have no information. They only gave you a name, an address, and a phone number, or whatever.

[Denis Meunier]

If I don't have any transactions, I can't. No, I would not. I cannot divulge it.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

You cannot divulge it.

[Denis Meunier]

If I do not reach the threshold, I have no information in my database on which to make a reasonable ground to suspect money laundering.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

If they thought you were the CRA, but they didn't understand who the heck you were, you have no mechanism to say there was a phone call and someone identified a person without details.

[Denis Meunier]

That's correct.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Okay. What about the RCMP?

These are things that everybody's been talking about. We've been talking more about the offshore evasion part, but it's inextricably linked. People are involved domestically, as well as internationally. It involves a lot of different people. They're not lone gunmen. There are advisers and very legitimate people, lawyers, accountants, consultants, etc.

Eventually, somebody gets “stiffed” or whatever, becomes a little angry, and decides to lay it out. What is the protocol for the RCMP in regard to that type of whistleblowing?

[A/Commr Stephen White]

We receive a complaint. If we identify that it relates to tax evasion, we would refer it to the Canada Revenue Agency.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Okay. There's not much you can do. They're the ones who should be taking the initial steps on something like that.

[A/Commr Stephen White]

We consider them to be the primary agency to deal with matters related to tax evasion. They have access to a lot of information that we as police would not have. It's basically the background related to taxation revenue of particular individuals.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

In regard to the laundering side, it was already asked. Mr. Wallace referred to profiling a money launderer. Is there a preponderance of evidence that it's certain types of people or organizations? What have we learned over all these years about the profile of the classic money launderer?

[A/Commr Stephen White]

In guess in today's environment I would say nothing is exact. Whether it's individuals or whether it's organizations, there are a number of different ways they become engaged in laundering their funds, whether it's trying to integrate them into a banking system here in Canada, carrying bulk cash down to the United States and trying to get it into bank accounts there, or, as I mentioned earlier, comingling criminal proceeds with funds from a business that actually generates legitimate income.

We have all types of individuals involved in a wide variety of criminal activity, from organized crime groups involved in drug trafficking, to individuals or organized crime groups involved in mass-marketing fraud, to identity theft, to identity fraud, to mortgage fraud.

There's such a broad scope of criminal activity related to financial crime and such a broad scope of individuals and organizations involved that there is no one specific profile that consistently stands out.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Massimo Pacetti]

Thank you, Mr. Szabo and Mr. White.

We have Mr. Hiebert and then Mr. Mulcair.

Mr. Hiebert, you have five minutes.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Mr. Meunier, you mentioned a couple of big numbers, both in your report and in your testimony. In your report you say that you receive 65,000 pieces of information per day. In your testimony you mentioned that there were 64,000 suspicious transactions per year. Did I get that right?

[Denis Meunier]

Yes, you did.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

That's a lot of transactions, but it's about 1/365th of the amount of data you receive. That's all ferreted out by the software technology that triggers an alert of some kind?

[Denis Meunier]

We receive all of this information. We do review all of the suspicious transactions that come in on a daily basis. It's a very important trigger for us. We have also developed programs though which we've identified certain rules to hone in on some particular behaviours. Most of the reports we receive are on EFTs. We receive 99% of our information electronically from the institutions. The vast majority are on EFTs of over $10,000 wired in and out of Canada.