Welcome back to the Trace podcast, Brib, Swindle, or Steel.

Today we're in beautiful Vancouver, but sadly, we're talking about the Vancouver model of financial crime.

Our guest is Dr. Peter German, a lawyer and author.

Peter is a former deputy commissioner with the RCMP and is currently

the president of the Canadian International Center for Criminal Law Reform. For our purposes today,

though, he has also just completed an extensive independent review into money laundering at BC casinos.

Peter, thank you for joining me today. Most welcome.

This is a financial crime podcast, and your report really has it all.

Money laundering, drug smuggling, loan sharks, and ultimately the use of real estate to hide illicit assets,

although we'll cover that in more detail next week. Can you take a few minutes to describe what has sadly come to be known as this Vancouver model. Well, thank you,

Alexander. It's just a pleasure to be with you here. And I was given a very interesting

assignment about eight months ago to inquire into what were referred to as allegations of money

laundering at the casinos that exist here in the greater

Vancouver area. During the course of that investigation or review that I conducted, I had the

opportunity of learning that there was, in fact, money being laundered through our casinos,

the origin of which was with organized crime.

It was, in most cases, drug money, the proceeds of illegal drug trafficking, which was being

washed or laundered through the casinos in order to cleanse that money. That in itself is not

terribly unusual because drug traffickers do have to clean that money. That in itself is not terribly unusual because drug traffickers do

have to clean their money. And we can certainly talk about the money laundering process.

However, what was unique here in Vancouver, Vancouver is very much an Asian city. And at about

the same time that this was occurring in our casinos, there were a lot of people

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