Canada to create new Financial Crimes Agency, but will it have a B.C. base?

Bundles of 20-dollar bills sezied in October 2015 as part of RCMP E-Pirate investigation into money laundering at alleged underground Richmond bank, Silver International. Source: police photos filed in BC Supreme court documents. Photo by TBA /PNG

Article content

A recently announced federal law enforcement agency dedicated to investigating financial crimes will take years to set up, and to be effective, the Ottawa-headquartered force will need to have a presence in places like B.C., say policing experts.

Article content

The new Financial Crimes Agency will be allowed to create offices outside of its head office, under legislation introduced at the end of April, but it’s unclear if that will happen.

Article content

Article content

Article content

The new agency is meant to investigate things like cross-border money laundering, a hot-button issue in B.C. in the past decade and the subject of several government reports and inquiries.

Article content

Article content

“You can’t investigate this stuff from a distance,” said Peter German, the author of two B.C. government reports on money laundering and a former deputy commissioner of the RCMP.

Article content

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government has provided the stand-alone agency, which is to be separate from the RCMP, a budget of $353 million over five years, and $82 million a year after that. There’s also $46 million over five years and $11.5 million a year after that to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, and $20 million over five years and $1.5 million a year after that to the Department of Finance to support the new agency.

Article content

Policing observers and experts expect the agency to have about 250 personnel, about half of them investigating officers, with the rest support staff and civilian experts in areas such as accounting and finance.

Article content

German has significant concerns, saying just one major investigation could eat up all of the agency’s resources, as it could involve physical surveillance, electronic surveillance, search warrants and interviews. “You need highly trained individuals, and you need a lot of them to do one of these files,” he said.

Article content

Article content

The only way you could this without establishing regional offices is if investigators from Ottawa move out here for anywhere from six to 18 months, said German.

Article content

Article content

It would have been a better idea to bolster the RCMP’s ability to investigate financial crime, and provide this new money to them, he said.

Article content

The new agency has been provided the ability to use RCMP officers while it is established.

Article content

In response to Postmedia questions, the Department of Finance, which is heading the creation of the agency, did not say whether it would establish an office in B.C., and if it did, how many officers would staff it.

Article content

“It would be premature to speculate on the agency’s regional footprint, staffing decisions, or potential service agreements with the RCMP. These matters will be determined by the future commissioner, who has yet to be appointed,” said the department in an email from media relations officer Benoit Mayrand.

Article content

The B.C. government referred questions about the new agency’s operations to the federal government.

Article content

In a written statement, the B.C. Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General said the province is taking time to understand the newly announced agency and how it will work with police in B.C.