Ontario’s gambling regulator has said it will enquire how a convicted fraudster was able to bank and move back more than $4 billion in hard cash over several years at Toronto-area casinos before leaving the country.
Branavan Kanapathipilla has a outlaw chronicle involving convictions for hoax and other crimes that stretches backward 2 decades, according to an affidavit by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP).
The tribunal filing is component of an sweat past authorities to clutch $100,000 in cash in deposited past Kanapathipilla at the Fallsview Casino inwards Niagara Falls Falls lowest November.
The alluviation was flagged as a suspicious dealings past gambling casino faculty and seized past the OPP, which accuses Kanapathipilla of being in conference with a loan shark. However, authorities feature not charged him with any crime.
STR Pile-up
Kanapathipilla failed to hang a audience shoemaker's last hebdomad near whether the money would follow seized permanently and has seemingly fled abroad, according to lawcourt documents.
His activities experience generated hundreds of suspicious dealing reports (STRs) by casinos and banks o'er the past tense 12 years totaling $11 million, the documents reveal. This is extremely uniform with money laundering.
One Toronto Gaming, which operates Casino Woodbine, Pickering Casino Resort, Great Blue Heron Casino and Hotel, and Casino Ajax in Ontario reported 120 suspicious transactions past Kanapathipilla totalling more than $3 billion in 2021 and 2022 alone.
“Records obtained from a production parliamentary law relating to Kanapathipillai’s TD Bank accounts designate a account of Kanapathipillai depositing a big amount into his account statement and then making multiple cash withdraws via both the vote counter and the ATM,” wrote Det. John Constable Vic Jetvic inwards the affidavit.
“His drug withdrawal and financial dealings patterns were consistent with money laundering techniques that i experience observed as an investigator,” added Jetvic.
Slow to React
The Anti-Money Laundering Unit of Ontario’s Alcohol and Gaming Commission (AGCO) said this hebdomad it would enlightened a compliance review article to assess whether gambling casino operators met their regulatory obligations.
But some are quizzical whether find fault lies with regulators kinda than operators, since the casinos consistently filed STRs inward dividing line with their regulatory responsibilities.
Retired RCMP money laundering medical specialist Garry Clement told CTV News that the casinos’ financial reports simply weren’t beingness acted on fast enough.
“These seem pretty obvious,” he said. “There’s more to this than just gambling.”
British Columbia River has been forced to turn to the problem of widescale money laundering through and through its casinos and real-estate markets. That’s after the province was accused of comme il faut an “laundromat for unionized crime” inward an independent story commissioned by the provincial government.
In 2019, a B.C. government activity enquiry concluded that casino money laundering was “not just now a B.C. problem” and called for a federal investigation into the issue.
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