The Roy Green Show interviews Sam Cooper on April 24th. about his article below.

Link for radio at bottom of this feed

Ex-B.C. premier Christy Clark says she wasn’t warned of ‘spike’ in money laundering until 2015

By Sam Cooper

Former B.C. premier Christy Clark was pressed to answer in the province’s money laundering inquiry how much she knew about increasing volumes of suspected drug cash in B.C. casinos, whether she recognized this cash was boosting government revenue, and whether she did anything to intervene.

On Tuesday, Clark, who was premier from 2011 to 2017, was the first of a number of senior B.C. politicians scheduled to testify at the inquiry, which is mandated to determine whether governments, police and regulators failed to tackle money laundering as it took root in B.C.’s economy.

The Cullen Commission has previously heard that suspicious cash transactions driven by high rollers, transnational gangsters and underground bankers grew exponentially from 2010 in B.C. casinos, and that Rich Coleman, the former gaming minister, was directly warned of surging dirty-money concerns by his subordinates at the gaming regulator at a 2010 meeting.

By late 2014, these Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch investigators were forecasting that suspected drug-money laundering in B.C.’s casinos would reach $200 million per year.