Thank you, Chair, and thank you to both of you for appearing here today. As you know, we're in the very early stages of this study.
There was some troubling testimony on our first day of witnesses on Monday when officials of Foreign Affairs, and the RCMP, and the Superintendent of Financial Institutions indicated there were some significant gaps in Canada's ability under the two pieces of legislation that are the direct focus of this study, SIMA and the Freezing Assets of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act. There was also an indication of interdepartmental dysfunction in terms of how different departments might interpret and enforce these acts.
We noted, for example, in the Freezing Assets of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act that there are 10 definitions of a politically exposed foreign person, but that seems somewhat anachronistic and outdated because some of the most corrupt individuals, for example, in the current government of Russia, are individuals who wouldn't fit any of those designations. Some of them are jailers, some of them are police officers, who we know have accumulated vast amounts of money, much of which they have been trying to move around the world to safe deposit areas, amounts of money far in excess of what would appear appropriate for their lifetime earnings under their current job descriptions.
I was asking specifically about the case of Vitaly Malkin, who for 20 years tried to get into Canada, was denied successively by Immigration, was interviewed deeply by CSIS, and is widely known. There is a huge file of credible evidence on his money laundering, on his embezzlement of UN aid funds, of his trade in conflict diamonds, and profits from organized crime.
Eventually, because a citizenship judge overturned the Immigration Canada interviewing officer's ruling that he was inadmissible, he was allowed into Canada. He has made tens of millions of dollars of investments into property in Canada. He has still been denied citizenship and has since returned to the Soviet Union where he would now be considered a member of one of those 10 definitions on the Freezing Assets of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act.
I'm wondering if you could offer your observations, and very often from the academic community we get straighter answers than we do with the officials of many of the departments responsible for enforcement of this act.