On Oct. 15, 2015, a Mountie burst through the front door of an office in Richmond, carrying a battering ram and with a rifle slung on his back. The door swung shut behind him, locking him inside. He was in the lobby of Silver International Investment, a high-end money transfer business, surrounded by bulletproof glass.
Behind a second glass door, a woman rushed to make a call while hiding several cellphones. Under her desk was a safe stuffed with bundles of cash. The Mountie, a large man, counted seconds anxiously, wondering if the woman would unlock the interior door.
It was one of 10 police raids in Richmond that day — part of a major investigation that has uncovered massive money laundering and underground banking networks with links to Mainland China, Macau and B.C. casinos, allege the RCMP’s federal organized crime unit and China’s national police service.
Postmedia has spent six months looking into the case, involving freedom of information requests for thousands of documents and dozens of interviews with government and law enforcement sources that were not authorized to be identified. Now, the inside story can be told of the investigations that led B.C.’s attorney general last week to order an independent review of casinos overseen by the B.C. Lottery Corp.
In late August, at a Vancouver conference attended by U.S. and Canadian law enforcement officials, RCMP Insp. Bruce Ward outlined the details of E-Pirate, the investigation into Silver International, Asian organized crime groups, and an alleged $500-million-plus international money laundering service run from Richmond.
