Financial crimes, including money laundering and terror financing, setting new records: FINTRAC
Canada’s financial intelligence agency is reporting that it easily set a new mark last year in the number of cases that it sent to police for possible criminal investigation, just one metric in the broader picture of a country facing escalating problems with money laundering and terrorist financing.
The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) reported Thursday in its 2024-25 annual report that it generated 2,700 disclosures that supported police investigations, easily the organization’s most ever.
The record-setting year reflects huge jumps in fraud, cyber ransomware, online child sexual exploitation and a range of other online crimes that are often directly related to other financial crimes, such as money laundering and terrorist financing. These darker sides of the online world are rising in Canada and elsewhere along with the virtual currency industry.
According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, Canadians were scammed out of $643-million in online fraud in 2024, almost three times the figure from just four years earlier. Only between five and 10 per cent of these types of scams are reported to authorities, the federal government has said. The RCMP would not comment.
The document from FINTRAC, which aims to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing activities while protecting personal information, also reported:
- More than 1,300 assessments, a category that includes compliance examinations, an increase of more than 40 per cent from the previous year
- 23 notices of violation, the most ever, that led to fines of more than $25 million
- 32 cases of non-compliance disclosed to police, more than double from a year earlier and by far the most ever
FINTRAC’s report comes just a week after the agency announced that it had imposed its largest penalty ever on a Vancouver crypto currency company, more than nine times as much as the second largest ever. The fine against Xeltox Enterprises Ltd., which operates as Cryptomus, was for $176,960,190 for a range of administrative violations, including failing to report transactions of more than $10,000 in virtual currency on 1,518 occasions in July, 2024.
Ottawa is trying to crack down on the growth of online crimes. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced earlier this week that the federal government’s budget next week will include plans for a new Financial Crimes Agency. The new body will aim to improve Canada’s ability to tackle online scams, money laundering and other types of fraud.
The bolstered effort to fight fraud and other crimes is expected to get a boost from legislative changes to the Bank Act, scheduled to be unveiled this spring. The new legislation will require banks and other financial institutions to play a larger and more proactive role in detecting and fighting various types of fraud.
Julie Matthews, an Edmonton-based, anti-scam advocate, said there’s little doubt that scams are on the rise and that the perpetrators seem to be able to increasingly focus on those most vulnerable to a specific type of scam. Romance scams, for example, are often the most devastating because they can involve both a financial loss and shame, she said.
“It’s disgusting.”
Matthews said education and awareness are still the best tools to fight scams.
National Post
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