In late March, we talked about how Canada’s federal police, the RCMP, were building a case management system and data portal, alongside AI tools, to help fight a tsunami of fraud in Canada. In somewhat related news, last month, the Canadian government tabled legislation to create a new national police service dedicated to financial crimes. From Jessica Davis’s article in The Line:
This enactment establishes the Financial Crimes Agency as a specialized federal law enforcement agency whose mandate is to investigate financial crimes and to contribute to the recovery of proceeds of crime. […] So far, we know it will be a federal law enforcement agency focused on money laundering, serious fraud, major capital market crimes, and the recovery of the proceeds of crime.
Canada has a reputation as a global haven for money laundering, particularly through our real estate sector. Again, from the article:
The agency is also being established because the RCMP, which has historically been responsible for these investigations, has proven ineffective. This is due to many reasons: a lack of leadership and interest in financial crimes, structural issues like the resource draw that contract policing has on the force, and the prioritization of “threat to life” investigations […].
Let’s hope the creation of this specialized nation police force is the first step toward remediating Canada’s tarnished global reputation for “snow washing” dirty money.