By: Daniel M. Deilgat
Gander,
Newfoundland and Labrador
Canada.
Email: danieldeilgat@icloud.com
FINTRAC is the financial intelligence unit that monitors monetary transactions to identify and prevent illegal activities such as money laundering and financing of terrorist organizations. The center reports to the Minister of Finance, who in turn is accountable to Parliament. FINTRAC is headquartered in Ottawa and has offices in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.
The centre is headed by CEO Sarah Paquet and is a standing member of The Egmont Group.
The Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units is an international organization that facilitates cooperation and intelligence sharing between national financial intelligence units (FIUs) to investigate and prevent money laundering and terrorist financing. National FIUs collect information on suspicious or unusual financial activity and are responsible for processing and analyzing the information received. FIUs are normally not law enforcement agencies themselves, findings are shared with appropriate law enforcement or prosecution bodies if sufficient evidence of unlawful activity is found. The Egmont Group is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada,
The take away here is that FINTRAC was formed to “prevent” various forms of money laundering, terrorism financing and a whole slew of national security issues related to financing.
So, does FINTRAC work?
The short answer is no.
Sure, it detects millions of small transactions and, every once in a while, it will refer matters to various government agencies like the CRA, the RCMP and others under the purview of the Justice Department but, when it counts, the math done by FINTRAC favours the criminals and not the best interests of Canadians.
For example, FINTRAC has a yearly budget of approximately 50 million dollars. It has just under 400 employees spread over less than ten offices. Quick math would put the costs of salaries and other related expenses at approximately 40 million dollars. Not sure about rental leases for any of its operations, nor for costs related to operating such staff and facilities but you get the picture.
By the time expenditures are paid, there is no money for investigations for all intensive purposes.
So, what is the calculation that guides decisions to cause for the enforcement of money laundering statutes?
None. Government agencies play musical chairs with FINTRAC referrals and when the music stops, everyone gets a chair.
A napkin analysis would lead you to conclude that funding for these agencies is determine and allocated by whoever is in government at any given time. That some of these key politicians are often the first ones to be compromised by the very people that FINTRAC refers to law enforcement agencies.
Before FINTRAC, the problem was to divert liability and deniability away from agencies like The CRA and The RCMP, and onto a more nebulous and independent entity, namely FINTRAC.
We saw this when Brian Mulroney cannibalized the RCMP budgets to a point that the force had to borrow money from the CRA when they served warrants for various tax centers. The Coup de Grace, Mulroney diluted the national security mandate of the serge and reduced the RCMP to a little more than cops for hire.
At that point I no longer wanted to join the Mounties.
I got involved in financial crime analysis way before FINTRAC came about. The umbrella of my mandate was multi-pronged. From law firms to casinos, arms dealers to securities fraud and theft, to political intelligence operations, mobsters to terrorists ,a world of illicit money laundering operations revealed itself and my curiosity had no bounds.
You would think that having FINTRAC in the tool box would be of great help, it was actually an obstacle. In fact, for every million dollars FINTRAC spends, ten million dollars is embezzled or otherwise stolen from Canadians, investors and global clients of Canadian companies.
It was not an accident when Brian Mulroney was nominated as the leader of the Conservative Party.
Financed through the wealth of an international Conservative group, Mulroney’s government would eventually lay the groundwork to weaken international efforts to combat financial crimes.
By the time FINTRAC came about, the baby was thrown out with the bath water.
Over the years countless hours of surveillance of law firms and the development of schemes designed to provoke reactions from various governmental agencies, organizations and individuals, as well as direct infiltrations of various groups and criminal entities in what became a sting of massive proportions spanning the planet, a pattern emerged that clearly supports the implementation of schemes that were designed to counter any impact organizations like FINTRAC would have on combatting money laundering.
In the initial case I stumbled upon scams which led to investigations into how and why he could get away with such extraordinary criminal enterprises.
My direct involvement with international agencies involved in combatting international money laundering through consulting agreements, offered me the opportunities to be absorbed.
Having come full circle into the investigation, the conclusion is undeniable, substantial criminal frauds and thefts through money laundering and other mechanisms, in Canada and abroad, would not have survived legal tests would it not be for the complicit blessing of government agencies such as the RCMP, the CRA, FINTRAC and other key peripheral partners of these agencies as well as the former Prime Minister of Canada, The Right Hon. Stephen Harper.
All FINTRAC has accomplished is that, various government agencies have greater access to the private information of Canadians and can better established whom it allowes to commit financial crimes and who should be prosecuted on pro forma statutes.
Since FINTRAC was formed, financial crimes in Canada consistently grew exponentially.
01/11/22
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