{"id":639034,"date":"2026-04-30T17:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T17:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/639034\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T17:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T17:48:08","slug":"canada-to-create-powerful-financial-crimes-agency-as-us-weakens-its-approach-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/639034\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada to create powerful financial crimes agency as US weakens its approach | Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canada is to establish a new and powerful law enforcement agency to investigate financial crime, in stark contrast to the US, where weakened federal investigators have struggled to pursue fraudsters and the White House has pardoned convicted money launderers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A bill to create the Financial Crimes Agency (FCA) completed its first reading in parliament this week. The legislation was introduced by the governing Liberals and with their parliamentary majority, the party is likely to move it through both levels of government quickly.<\/p>\n

The new agency, tasked with investigating and prosecuting financial crimes, is the result of a public inquiry that found Canada lacked a cohesive strategy against money laundering<\/a>, placing it behind its international peers.<\/p>\n

Jessica Davis, a former intelligence analyst with Canada\u2019s spy agency who focuses terrorism and illicit financing, said: \u201cThe fact we\u2019re actually seeing the creation [of a] new enforcement agency is a meaningful investment and hopefully signals the understanding of the seriousness of the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to a new law enforcement agency, Canada will ban cryptocurrency ATMs, which officials say have been used by scammers to defraud victims and by criminals to launder the proceeds of crime. Canada has nearly 4,000 cryptocurrency ATMs, the most per capita in the world<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A customer using the world\u2019s first permanent bitcoin ATM, unveiled at a coffee shop in Vancouver in 2013. Photograph: Andy Clark\/Reuters<\/p>\n

For more than a quarter of a century, the financial transactions and reports analysis centre (Fintrac) has functioned as Canada\u2019s financial intelligence unit. Last year, the agency uncovered $45bn in transactions from money laundering, counterterrorist financing, sanctions and evasion disclosures.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a figure that could be too high or far too low \u2013 we just don\u2019t fully know the scope of financial crime in this country,\u201d said Davis, who runs the consulting firm Insight Threat Intelligence.<\/p>\n

Fintrac does not track and arrest criminals, instead handing off its investigations to the police and prosecutors. Under the new legislation, the newly formed FCA will investigate and prosecute \u2013 a move that lessens the scope and mandate of Fintrac and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the country\u2019s federal law-enforcement authority.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge for the RCMP is that it has been unable and unwilling to actually investigate and sustain investigations related to financial crimes,\u201d said Davis. \u201cThere is a lack of funding, a lack of skills, lack of resources and a lack of political will. But financial crimes investigations are long, complex and require sustained resources, which I\u2019m hopeful we\u2019re now going to see put in place.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 2024 report<\/a> on the scale of financial crimes estimated that more than US$3tn in illicit funds had moved through the global financial system in the previous year. Among the largest culprits were money laundering for human and drug trafficking, as well as terrorist financing. A 2024 report<\/a> from the US treasury department found those efforts had had \u201cdevastating economic and social impact\u201d on citizens.<\/p>\n

The Canadian effort marks a stark contrast to the approach taken by the current US administration to the scourge of financial crime. Donald Trump\u2019s government issued a high-profile pardon of Changpeng Zhao after the self-styled \u201cking<\/a>\u201d of cryptocurrency pleaded guilty<\/a> to money laundering charges. His company, Binance, had been ordered to pay a record $4.3bn penalty for its role in facilitating terrorist financing.<\/p>\n

Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, at a conference in Paris in 2022. Photograph: Beno\u00eet Tessier\/Reuters<\/p>\n

In a January letter to federal watchdogs, senior Democrats called for an investigation into Trump\u2019s decision to shift more than 25,000 personnel away from investigating fraud, tax evasion and money laundering in favour of immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Trump administration is letting white-collar criminals<\/a> off the hook for all kinds of wrongdoing,\u201d senator Elizabeth Warren, from Massachusetts, said in a statement. \u201cInstead of protecting American families from fraud and predatory behaviour, the administration is diverting resources to pursue its inhumane immigration agenda. Nobody is above the law, and the Trump administration needs to stop treating white-collar criminals with kid gloves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada and the US are diverging,\u201d said Davis, adding that the US was still \u201cfar ahead of us in terms of its ability to prosecute and invest, investigate and prosecute\u201d financial crimes. \u201cWe\u2019re still playing quite a bit of catchup now. Hopefully Canada will shore up our own abilities to protect Canada. Because the things that happen in the US do tend to happen in Canada. And so this new agency is a bulwark against that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The creation of a new law enforcement agency was applauded by anti-corruption groups. Salvator Cusimano, the executive director of Transparency International Canada, said: \u201cThe [Canadian] government is proposing an ambitious but realistic mandate for this agency, which bodes well as a much-needed first step in improving our enforcement of financial crimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce established, the agency must coordinate closely with other enforcement and regulatory agencies across the country, and build on their efforts, if it is to achieve its potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is unclear how easily the agency will work alongside the RCMP, where it will be based and whether it will draw key resources from other units.<\/p>\n

Davis said: \u201cThis agency is going to matter to Canadians because when you start to combine things like economic pressures, the cost of living and really difficult sort of existence for everyday people, we start to have less tolerance for people making money off of us.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a massive and necessary investment for Canada. But we\u2019ll also have to keep pressuring the government to continue to fund it, continue to prioritise it, to actually get some of those outcomes that we\u2019re looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canada is to establish a new and powerful law enforcement agency to investigate financial crime, in stark contrast…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":["post-639034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}