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Presentations and Speeches
Introductory Remarks by FINTRAC Director
Horst Intscher at the Canadian Police College Workshop on Organized
Crime and Money Laundering
Ottawa
Sunday, November 17, 2002
Welcome participants in this workshop on the New Criminal World Order,
and thanks to Toni Murray for inviting FINTRAC to participate in mounting
it.
- The focus of your program is on organized crime and terrorism and
the role of money in such activities
- Money is a critical ingredient in both, and money is normally the
sole purpose for engaging in organized criminal activity.
- As you will hear throughout this week, organized criminal activity
is enormous in scope, and profits from it are nothing short of
staggering. This in turn creates a gigantic need for those groups and
individuals to find ways of hiding their profits from the prying eyes
of law enforcement agencies and governments. The process of hiding the
criminal origins of money is what is referred to as money laundering.
- In 1998, the International Monetary Fund estimated that, world wide,
money laundering annually amounted to between 2% and 5% of global
Gross Domestic Product, that is the value of all goods and services
produced on the entire planet in one year. In todays terms, that means
that money laundering, globally, amounts to between US$ 600 billion
and US$ 1.5 TRILLION! There are only 6 or 7 countries in the world
whose GDPs reach US$1.5 trillion.
- Criminal profits of that magnitude have extraordinary destabilising
potential. The potential for corruption is enormous, and entire
societies can be destablised by the corruption arising from organized
criminal activity. The potential for economic dislocation is also
significant, as criminal (and untaxed) profits make for profoundly
unfair competition in marketplaces. Moreover, in some instances,
sizeable segments of the work force can become dependent on such
activity, making it even more difficult for governments to address the
underlying problem. And, finally, the easy availability of criminal
profits provides the wherewithall to finance further, more audacious,
and more corrosive criminal activity, and to hire the best legal and
accounting talent to protect the perpetrators and their profits.
- In recent years, terrorism has also become a major concern for most
countries of the world. While these activities are not normally
carried out for profit, their destabilising impact on societies is as
great as, or even greater than, the impact of organized crime.
- Mounting terrorist activities requires money, and globalized,
concerted and coordinated terrorist activity requires quite a lot of
money. Increasingly, we see that funding for such activity comes from
criminal acitivities, as well as from other traditional sources such
as community fund raising and/or sponsorship by foreign governmental
and non-governmental bodies.
- How do we tackle these problems? Governments and law enforcement
agencies everywhere have come to realize that it is not enough to
target the perpetrators and put them behind bars. We now understand
that if we hope to make a serious dent on the problem, we have to be
able to find and seize criminal profits and disrupt the funding
channels for criminal and terrorist activity. This has led to new
enforcement approaches and a greater reliance on multi jurisdictional
cooperation and on multi-disciplinary attacks on major crime and
terrorism targets.
- One of the essential ingredients of any effective attack on
organized crime is good intelligence. And since we are now going after
not only the criminals and terrorists, but also their money, there is
a strong requirement for good financial intelligence. During the past
decade, more and more governments have come to recognize the
importance of ensuring the availability of good financial
intelligence. They have passed legislation requiring the mandatory
reporting of certain kinds of financial transaction information. And,
they have created centralized financial intelligence units to receive
that information, to analyze it and to ensure that high quality
financial intelligence is passed to criminal investigators to
facilitate their investigations and prosecutions of organized
criminals and terrorists.
- FINTRAC, the agency of which I am pleased to be the Director, is
Canadas financial intelligence unit (FIU). Our mission is to provide
high quality financial intelligence to law enforcement agencies and
intelligence agencies to facilitate the investigation or prosecution
of organized crime and terrorism. I understand that one of my staff,
Gary Nichols, the head of our Toronto office, and a former member of
the RCMP, will be making a presentation on FINTRAC later this week. He
will provide you with a detailed overview of our mandate and how we go
about our business. I understand also that he will be able to provide
you with copies of our first annual report, which was tabled about 10
days ago.
- All of you are here today because you are committed, in your various
capacities, to combatting organized crime and terrorist activity. It
is clear that this presents daunting challenges, but your fellow
citizens, your co-workers, your neighbours and your spouses and
children depend on you to engage in this campaign. Their future
well-being will be greatly enhanced by your successes.
- My job, and the job of FINTRAC, is to try to make your job easier
and more effective. We exist for only one purpose, and that is to
provide high quality financial intelligence to law enforcement. We
succeed if you succeed.
- This workshop is unique because it provides the rare opportunity to
bring together those of us in the law enforcement and intelligence
communities with those in the private sector - to learn and to share
our knowledge and experience. It is also symbolic of the kind of
cooperation and collaboration that is required and will be required
for us, collectively, to combat organized crime and terrorism.
- I wish you great success over the coming week, and I am confident
that this workshop will accomplish its objectives - each of you will
leave with a better understanding of the underlying problems and how
to work together to address them. Most importantly, you will forge new
relationships and you will know that you are not alone in confronting
the daunting challenges that face us all.
- Again, many thanks to Toni Murray and the College for inviting
FINTRAC to involve itself in this initiative. We are very proud to be
your partner and we look forward to working with the college and with
all of you in the future.
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