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Canada's
lax currency laws allow billions of dollars
to be laundered here annually and interfere
with international investigations, one of
the world's top Mafia fighters said
yesterday. Canada has ''at least 10
organized-crime groups but . . . there is no
law that targets organized crime, as there
is both in Italy and the U.S.,'' Italian
prosecutor Nicola Gratteri told a Toronto
symposium on the threat of the new global
Mafia. Gratteri said his own
Mafia-fighting work in Italy has meant his
''life has been totally transformed.'' He
travels by armored car,lives in a highly
secured house, does not go to local
restaurants or the cinema, and is never
anywhere - including the conference -without
several bodyguards nearby. Antonio Nicaso,
an organized crime specialist and the writer
of several books, told the Toronto audience
that Canada is the ''underworld laboratory
for organized crime.'' While researching his
latest book, Nicaso said he and his
partner
found that every case they investigated in
the U.S. - from Los Angeles to Wilmington,
Del. - led back to Canadian criminals.
Yet, Canada has no anti-organized crime
laws.Mario Possamai, a Canadian investigator
with Washington, D.C.-based forensic
accounting firm Lindquist Avey Macdonald
Baskerville Inc.,said Canadian laws do not
allow police to look beyond a single
criminal act as part of an association or a
larger organization. He said the Canadian
system doesn't work because of such
limitations. ''It's crucial to go after the
head office, the other branches, the
wholesalers,'' he said. Canada also has no
laws that require financial institutions to
report any suspicious transactions, although
the major banks have voluntarily adopted
such a policy. And small currency exchanges,
which are not regulated as strictly as
banks, easily wire money around the world.
Also causing money-laundering problems are
Canada's immigration laws. Critics like
Possamai and Nicaso say Canada's laws
are too
lax. |
