Canadian Authorities Find Suspicious Money Transactions Worth $460 Million

Wednesday, November 5, 2003

(18:05)

CBC News

"These numbers show that we take money laundering and terrorist financing seriously. By establishing FINTRAC, this government has made significant progress in building an anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regime."

-- Maurice Bevilacqua

Secretary of State for International Financial Institutions


OTTAWA -- CBC
The federal agency charged with finding cases of money laundering and "terrorist financing activities" said Wednesday it has identified $460 million in suspicious transactions in the past year.

The information was contained in the annual report of FINTRAC (the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada). The agency was set up in 2000 to look into money laundering and was expanded after the 9/11 attacks to include the "detection and deterrence of terrorist financing activity."

The report said it had forwarded information on 103 cases to law enforcement and national security agencies in the past year.

In 78 cases, the disclosures related to money laundering. The agency said 24 disclosures related to "suspected terrorist activity financing and other threats to the security of Canada." One case was related to both.

(More: CBC.ca)

2003 © CBC News.

Dan