Writing exclusively for the Toronto Star in Canada, Martin Kenney laments Canada’s lack of effective action against money laundering and corruption
Canada is waking up to the fact that the country is being used to launder criminal funds, including assets gleaned from abhorrent crimes such as drug trafficking, human trafficking and terrorist financing.
In the opening chapter of a new book on dirty money, Sanaa Ahmed, an assistant law professor at the University of Calgary, recently likened Canada’s approach to anti-money laundering regulations to creating a pair of “distressed jeans” that have been holed by design.
“They are part of the design of the jeans. The holes were always supposed to be part of it.” She then states that the Canadian economy is dependent on dirty money, dubbing it “laundering as public policy.”
I have previously written about Canada’s lax approach to “snow-washing” of illicit funds. “Snow-washing” refers to the legions of unscrupulous tax advisers who launder money in Canada, such as through buying real estate, making it clean as the “driven snow in the Great White North,” per one Toronto tax lawyer. Many of these practices were revealed in the 2016 Panama papers, and yet we still turn a blind eye to obvious wrongdoing which has allowed shifty operators to abuse our financial services sector.
The number of such instances means that it is no longer possible for the government to mount a meaningful defence of its position when it comes to money laundering.
READ MORE IN MARTIN KENNEY’S EXCLUSIVE ARTICLE FOR THE TORONTO STAR