The Achilles heel of B.C.’s Inquiry into Money Laundering was on full display in its walking-on-eggshells treatment of Canada’s Big Six banks.
The supposedly tough-nosed commission that was going to name names and assign blame went in camera to hear key testimony from a panel of bankers.
And it treated with kid gloves the first bank executive to testify — Michael Bowman, the global chief of anti-money laundering for the Toronto-Dominion Bank Group.
Casino operators, realtors, lawyers, accountants, ATM operators and plenty of others have been dragged through the mud, but the banks so far seem Teflon-coated.
Consider that in March 2018, the Mounties told the national institutions that an investigation had found 3,000 anonymously purchased bank drafts were negotiated through B.C. casinos worth $150 million — $147 million, or 98 per cent, from the Big Six.
“The top two financial institutions … would be TD and the next bank, that together represent 66 per cent of the dollar value and about 63 per cent of the count volume, roughly $100 million between the top two banks of which TD bank is the first,” commission lawyer Nicholas Isaac said.
