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International bodies, such as the Financial Action Task Force , have mandated the use of financial intelligence units (FIU) to address organized crime and money laundering. The purpose of this paper is to examine Canada’s FIU, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), and explore its current effectiveness and future challenges.

This paper examines FIUs in general and then looks more specifically at Canada’s FIU, its policy and legislative basis as well as future challenges for the FIU.

The challenge money laundering poses to society is a mirror of the challenge that organized crime poses: a test of the values and the importance of rule of law. The FIU is an important mechanism to address this challenge generally, and there are important changes in the environment that must be addressed if the future policy objectives of the FIU are to be met.

Some of the policy nostrums that are baked into the anti-money laundering system, such as placement, layering and integration, need to be revisited and researched to incorporate changes in the licit and illicit marketplaces.

Financial institutions and other intermediaries must comply with domestic anti-money laundering laws. Compliance is always contextual, and this paper will outline the role of the regulator and the environmental challenges that need to be met.

Effectively addressing money laundering and organized crime is critical to the maintenance of rule of law and the protection of the financial system.

This is a brief but very fulsome review of Canada’s FIU, FINTRAC, which captures broader challenges in addressing money laundering, economic crime and regulatory systems designed to protect rule of law and the integrity of the financial system. The paper not only examines the current state of the FIU but also explores challenges on the horizon.

Presentation on legal risks in business cooperation in a regulated sector in Canada.

The paper reviews Canadian case law and privacy implications for businesses cooperating with regulators and the risk of such cooperation to the regulated scheme.

The public interest in fostering regulator to law enforcement cooperation creates a potential risk to the regulator's scheme whenever the cooperation creates a risk that the regulator is a mere alter ego to criminal law enforcement.

Case law in Canada considers the scope of regulator compliance functions and the impact of sharing information with criminal investigators. Too much sharing, without concern for the regulated environment may risk regulator's authority to obtain business information absent a pre‐existing independent court authorization.

The paper is valuable to any regulator in a common law jurisdiction.

This paper aims to analyse the Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) of Canada, Australia, The Netherlands and India, focussing on key internal and external processes, such as the exchange of information, operations and compliance with Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations. The paper relies on secondary sources to compare and assess the practices and strategies employed by FIUs within these jurisdictions.

The paper relies on secondary sources to compare and assess the practices and strategies used by FIUs within these jurisdictions.

The ability to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) in countries is influenced by several internal and external factors, including the efficiency of their FIUs’ and compliance with FATF recommendations. The analysis of FIUs across the countries demonstrates a raft of multifaceted challenges and concerns. Yet, when it comes to compliance with FATF’s recommendations, shared concerns emerge, hinting at the complex interplay between country-specific operations and global compliance standards. The paper recommends enhancements to the FIUs’ operational efficiency and overall effectiveness in combating financial crimes.

The paper’s findings are limited to openly available data (such as annual reports and internet sources) for the respective countries. The paper relies on the transparency of FIUs through public media, focusing on comparing and analysing the FIUs of only four specific countries, which limits the generalisations of the findings.

This paper is significant for policymakers and FIU authorities, as they strive to improve the effectiveness of their units and assess their performance in alignment with international standards. The comparative analysis of the FIUs of India, Australia, Canada and The Netherlands provides valuable insights and recommendations that can inform policymakers and operational strategies towards enhancing how FIUs function globally.

This paper offers a unique comparative analysis of the FIUs of India, Australia, Canada and The Netherlands. Its findings have practical implications for policymakers and FIU authorities towards enhancing performance against international AML/CFT standards and promoting global cooperation.

This paper aims to examine whether the money laundering/terrorist financing (ML/TF) model excludes important aspects of terrorist resourcing and whether the terrorist resourcing model (TRM) provides a more comprehensive framework for analysis.

Research consisted of case studies of resourcing activities of four listed terrorist organizations between 2001 and 2015: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Hamas, a grouping of Al Qaeda-inspired individuals and entities under the heading “Al Qaeda inspired” and Hezbollah.

The most prevalent resourcing actors observed were non-profit organizations/associations, and the most prevalent form of resourcing was fundraising that targeted individual cash donations of small amounts. Funds were pooled, often passed through layers of charitable organizations and transmitted through chartered banks. The TRM is indeed found to provide a more comprehensive framework for identifying sources of resourcing and points of intervention. However, it does not in itself recommend effective means of response but it has implications for counter-resourcing strategies because it identifies resourcing actors and nodes where counter-resourcing could occur.

This paper advances the state of knowledge of terrorist resourcing activities in Canada and about the value of doing so through the analytical lens of the TRM as opposed to the predominant ML/TF model.

Focuses on the work of Canada’s Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI( in relation to international cooperation against money laundering and terrorism. Outlines Canada’s international obligations to the Financial Action Task Force, International Monetary Fund, United Nations, and to the international bodies concerned with customer due diligence and related matters: these are the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the International Association of Insurance Supervisors. Moves on to OSFI’s relationship with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC(. Lists some of the categories of higher risk that federally regulated financial institutions (FRFI( are expected by OSFI, following international regulators, to recognise as far as customer identification standards are concerned. Summarises OSFI’s anti‐money laundering guidelines. Indicates other areas of financial crime that OSFI combats: financial institution identity theft and advance fee scams, and the growing of marijuana plants in “grow houses”.

This study aims to explain how cryptocurrency is leveraged for illicit purposes across the global financial system. Specifically, it establishes how cryptocurrency has been changing the nature of transnational and domestic money laundering (ML). It then assesses the effectiveness of conventional anti-money laundering (AML) policy and legislation against the proliferation of crypto laundering, using Canada as a critical case study.

Data was collected from court cases and secondary sources to build cross-case trends of cryptocurrency use in ML. Illicit International Political Economy forms the theoretical foundation for this study, whose contribution is situated in the current literature on crypto-ML.

This study finds that Bitcoin is common among crypto-money launderers, though most also use some form of alt-coin, and that the use of third-party currency exchanges is a prevalent method to create illicit funds and conceal proceeds of crime. The findings validate two hypotheses that illicit use of crypto is prevalent in the first two stages of ML, and that crypto is most often used in conjunction with other fiat currencies. Although law enforcement is improving on monitoring and understanding popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, alt-coins pose a significant challenge for criminal intelligence. New regulations for third-party currency exchanges are having a positive impact on curtailing crypto-laundering but are shown to be insufficient per se to contain the use of crypto in criminal activity.

This study contributes to a more robust understanding of the use of virtual currency in transnational and domestic ML. It contributes to an emerging body of literature on the role of technological change in enabling the global flow of illicit funds. It also informs public policy on virtual currency in general, and on AML regulation in Canada in particular.

Financial market‐related crimes seem to continually increase in number as well as in the amount of illicit profits. This emerging situation has obliged governments and self‐regulated bodies to act aggressively on the issue. This paper provides a snapshot of the evolution timeline of financial crimes and discussion in support of the fight against this plague.

Based on financial crime literature and field work.

Improvement in the expertise and degree of refinement employed by both organized crime and criminal businessmen.

Some information originates from confidential sources and consequently could not be further developed.

Contemporary picture of the current situation. Some recommendations were submitted to regulatory authorities who are examining and adjusting their actions accordingly.

The purpose of this paper is to explore countering the financing of terrorism and its impact on financial institutions.

Actual examples of terrorist financing are considered, as well as the international and Canadian framework for financial institutions.

The system for countering the financing of terrorism can be improved to lower costs and risks to financial institutions and to enhance actionable intelligence. A balance must be sought between the objective, actionable intelligence and the mechanism used to advance that objective.

There is limited research on terrorism financing and little statistical data.

Some simple and modest reforms to the framework are suggested; policy makers need to consider their goals and revaluate the existing framework.

There is little writing in this area. This paper would be of interest to financial institutions, regulators, law enforcement and the intelligence community.

This paper aims to start with the assumption that money laundering through the use of investments will continue to occur and will become increasingly more complex to try and avoid detection. The paper aims to explore some of the theoretical factors that would need to be considered in any risk based framework and also to consider how an empirical model can try and prioritise the information and intelligence gathered through existing beneficial ownership and customer due diligence (CDD) systems.

This paper uses an empirical example of money laundering with investments and highlights the red flag indicators that led to its eventual discovery. The theoretical framework considers the difficulties of information overload and suggests that any empirical model of risk-based assessment would need to be able to discern between the various types of risk information gathered. The paper has developed one empirical model that could be used.

The paper suggests a model that breaks down beneficial ownership and CDD information into three areas: beneficial ownership for all major players, transparency of transactions and accountability of companies involved.

The paper has implications for the banking, regulatory and law enforcement sectors working in Anti-Money Laundering (AML).

The paper analyses a particular type of money laundering activity which it terms “investment laundering” using an empirical case study. It then develops a new theoretical and empirical risk assessment model to illustrate how risk-based approaches need to be able to discern between the different types of information gathered and the application to overall risk.

The purpose of this paper is to present an empirical study on the time needed to load and disburse cash using bill validators on slot machines and stand-alone cash dispensers in casinos in British Columbia under a Ticket In Ticket Out (TITO) system.

Testing took place over two days, using 18 machines. The results were extrapolated to estimate the approximate time required to process $1,000,000 with different average bill amounts in the cash mix and three different bill validator machines in common use. The average value per bill using the cash mix used by the public in the casino was $33.11 [standard error (SE) $2.11].

The mean time/accepted note ranged from 4.12 to 9.65 s, depending on bill validator type. This implies that the time needed to load $1,000,000 onto credit slips using bill validators on slot machines ranges from 35 to 81 h, excluding rest breaks and other breaks. The time needed to redeem $1,000,000 is estimated to be 3 h.

The implications of these finding for illicit actors to successfully launder large amounts of cash are discussed. Given the time needed to physically handle the cash, and other control systems currently in use in casinos in British Columbia, processing large amounts of cash using bill validators on slot machines would require a highly organized team that would find it difficult to elude detection.

The trial results provide a baseline estimate to be used going forward when investigating or proposing money laundering methodologies that include slot machines.