08/03/23

CANADA: Cabinet calls for consultants to create Financial Crimes Agency.

As published on westernstandard.news, Wednesday 8 March, 2023.

Cabinet yesterday called on consultants to help it create a long-promised Financial Crimes Agency. According to Blacklock's Reporter, the Department of Public Safety said work will continue into 2024.

“The Department of Public Safety has a requirement for a contractor to conduct research, analysis and undertake key stakeholder interviews in order to develop a final report outlining options for the organizational design of the Canadian Financial Crimes Agency,” the department said in a notice to contractors. “The final report will compliment internal research, analysis and policy development to inform a proposal to establish this new law enforcement agency.”

A final report is due on March 31, 2024. The Liberal Party in its 2021 election campaign platform Forward For Everyone promised to establish a new white collar crimes unit.

“Fraud, money-laundering, insider trading, organized crime and other financial crimes put Canadians at risk and put our economy at risk,” said Forward. “A re-elected Liberal government will establish Canada’s first ever nationwide agency whose sole purpose is to investigate these highly complex crimes and enforce federal laws in this area.”

The new agency would combine forensic audit services of the Canada Revenue Agency, the “intelligence capabilities” of the anti-money laundering Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre and financial crimes unit of the RCMP, it said.

Expert witnesses testifying last April 5 at the House of Commons public safety committee said the Financial Crimes Agency must proceed in tandem with federal rules on beneficial ownership. “The move to a federal beneficial ownership registry is an absolute national security requirement,” testified Professor Alexander Cooley of Barnard College of New York. “Whether this is 2025 or 2023, it should happen as soon as possible.”

“I think every country needs to know what the anonymous shell companies are and who’s behind them that are buying luxury real estate but also assets,” said Cooley. “I think any time you put the norm of privacy and my client’s privacy against transparency you’re on the losing side.”

Parliament last June 23 passed an omnibus budget bill C-19 that mandated compilation of a searchable Department of Industry database of “individuals with significant control over a corporation.” The beneficial ownership registry is intended to be operational by December 31.

“When the registry is fully implemented and available by the end of 2023 it will have a public interface that will be accessible and searchable,” Jennifer Miller, director general of marketplace policy at the industry department, testified last May 12 at the Senate banking committee. “I can’t speak right now because it is not built to the exact specifics.”

The registry applies only to federally-incorporated companies registered under the Canada Corporations Act. Most companies in Canada are provincially registered. “The government wants to give the appearance that they’re doing something,” Senator Elizabeth Marshall (Nfld. & Labrador) told the banking committee.