BCLC Accused of Not Reporting Large Transactions

 A provincial audit has shown that the B.C. Lottery Corporation has not been correctly reporting large transactions.

According to a provincial audit the B.C. Lottery Corporation has been under-reporting large cash transactions at its casinos that it is obligated to report to Canada’s money-laundering and antiterrorism financing watchdog.

The audit claims that for three years BCLC has not complied with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada’s (Fintrac) rules which state that smaller repeat transactions that cumulatively make up more than the $10,000 threshold for reporting.

This is not the first trouble that BCLC has had with Fintrac, in 2011 BCLC was fined almost $700,000 for mistakes made in over 1,000 reports. It has also been criticised by the RCMP’s Proceeds of Crime division for not reporting some of the large cash transactions as suspicious transactions.

A spokesman for BCLC’s Gaming Policy Enforcement Branch, Jamie Edwardson, said that BCLC asked Fintrac for clarification two years ago on how to report multiple large transactions received over a 24-hour period. In the meantime BCLC has been filing all transactions it deemed necessary to report.

According to Canadian law, any cash transaction over $10,000, be it at a bank, currency exchange or casino must be reported to Fintrac using a “Large Cash Transaction Report.”