Lavish Money Laundering Schemes Exposed in Canada

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Government officials in the province of British Columbia were aware that suspicious money was entering their revenue stream, but took no steps to stop it.

VANCOUVER — Self-professed students were buying multimillion-dollar homes in the Vancouver area, with dubious sources of income, or none at all.

A family of modest means transferred at least 114 million Canadian dollars to British Columbia.

Loan sharks cleaned their dirty money by giving garbage bags and hockey bags full of illicit Canadian 20 dollar bills to gamblers who took it onto casino floors.

Those were just some of the findings from a long-awaited report into money laundering in Canada’s western province of British Columbia, which after two years of testimony was finally released by a special commission on Wednesday.

Canada is a “major money laundering country,” with weak law enforcement and gaps in its laws, that put it on a list of countries that included Afghanistan, China and Colombia, according to a 2019 report by the State Department. Few places in Canada launder as much money as the province of British Columbia, specifically the region around Vancouver, which has one of the country’s biggest underground economies. The province has earned an international reputation as a haven for “snow washing” — a term for money laundering in Canada, according to government officials. » | Catherine Porter, Vjosa Isai and Tracy Sherlock | Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Why Oligarchs Choose London for Their Dirty Money | The Economist

May 12, 2022 • Britain is one of the best places in the world to launder dirty money. Our new film tells you why—and asks whether that's likely to change.

How London Became the Dirty Money Capital of the World | FT Film

Apr 22, 2022 • Russian oligarchs and companies have been investing in London for two decades, encouraged by British politicians of all stripes, but critics say the 'London laundromat' cleans dirty money from Russia and across the globe. The FT examines why it took Russia's invasion of Ukraine to put the issue in the spotlight and whether new sanctions and measures to tackle the problem go far enough

Londongrad: How the UK Became a Laundromat for Russian Oligarchs’ Dirty Money

Apr 6, 2022 • For years, the UK has welcomed oligarchs with few questions asked about their fortunes. Billions of dollars poured in. Now, British intelligence is warning that Russian money is propping up Putin’s regime -- and that some of it is helping fund the war in Ukraine.

Home Office Bans ‘Golden Visas’ for Wealthy Foreign Investors

Feb 17, 2022 • In another sign of declining relations, the Home Office has announced an immediate ban on so-called ‘golden visas’ for wealthy foreign investors wanting residency in the UK, citing "security concerns".

Kick the b*******s out, wherever they come from! We don’t need their filthy lucre. – © Mark

Will the Tories Hand Back Russian Cash as Putin Threatens War?

THE GUARDIAN – OPINION: To begin unravelling the Kremlin’s tendrils from Britain, the government must return millions in political donations

The consulate of the Russian embassy in London. Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA
Regardless of what unfolds in the coming days and weeks, the fact that Vladimir Putin is once again menacing and stalking the world stage requires those of us committed to peace to act. In the UK, that means getting our own house in order.

Let there be no doubt: when it comes to tackling Russian aggression, the Labour party supports the UK government and our allies. Those who equivocate between the actions of Russia and Nato are misguided or worse. The unified approach of recent weeks has surprised the Kremlin precisely because it is so used to encountering division. Those divisions have contributed to decades of failure in dealing with Russia.

The Putin playbook is well known. He favours chaos over order, the fog of war over clear strategy. He takes a nihilistic, zero-sum approach to foreign policy. Illicit money and influence are used as a judo move that turns the openness and freedom of western democracies into weaknesses. Over almost 12 years of Tory government, the tendrils of the Kremlin have been allowed to wrap around the UK, turning London into the “money-laundering capital of the world”. A cottage industry has been created that directly and indirectly does the bidding of those linked to Putin. Last week, it was revealed that £1.5bn of UK property had been snapped up by Russians accused of corruption or linked to the Kremlin. They are not here for the weather: they see us as a soft touch, somewhere they can hide cash with few questions asked. » | Keir Starmer * | Sunday, February 20, 2022

* Sir Keir Starmer is leader of the Labour party

Starmer: Russians hide cash in ‘soft touch’ UK: Labour leader accuses the Tories of failing to counter the flow of corrupt money into UK property sector »

No 10 Pressured Me to Drop Anti-money Laundering Measures, Says Ex-minister

THE GUARDIAN: UK ‘laughing stock’ for failure to stem dirty money, says Lord Faulks QC, who was told to drop register by Theresa May’s No 10

A former Conservative minister, once at the heart of efforts to clamp down on money laundering in London, has revealed that during Theresa May’s premiership, No 10 “leant on him” when he tabled amendments to introduce a public register of overseas property owners.

Lord Faulks said he had first tried to put the register into the criminal finances bill in 2017 and then again into a government bill on money laundering in 2018. He had described the overseas ownership of dirty money in London as an obscenity.

Faulks, a distinguished barrister and now an independent peer, told the Guardian he was rung by Downing Street during May’s tenure and told to go to a meeting where he met civil servants from four government departments including the Foreign Office, business officials and the Home Office. They told him to drop the amendments – for which he had a voting majority in the Lords – because they assured him Whitehall had the issue in hand.

He told the Guardian: “I was obviously misled because nothing has subsequently happened. I can only think a deluded desire to protect the City of London has led to all these delays.

“It is a real irony that our reputation for protecting the rule of law is one of the things that attracts people who have very little regard for the rule of law themselves and come from countries which ignore it almost altogether. » | Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic editor | Tuesday, February 15, 2022