Government Releases Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Consultation Paper

Just before the Canada Day weekend, the Finance Department released a consultation paper that outlines proposed changes to Canada’s anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regime.

The current law is up for a mandatory 5-year review by the Canadian Parliament. Under the current legislation, financial institutions, insurers, real estate agents and casinos must report any suspicious financial transactions as well as ALL completed transactions over $10,000 CDN.

The key measures proposed in the discussion paper include:

• expanding client identification, due diligence and record-keeping requirements
• expanding the reporting of suspicious attempted transactions and information sharing to detect terrorist financing through charities
• adding "politically exposed persons" such as politicians, judges, military leaders, senior civil servants and senior executives of Crown corporations to the list of categories to monitor
• improving compliance monitoring and enforcement
• strengthening FINTRAC’s (the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada) ability to provide intelligence
• expanding the kind of information that the Canada Revenue Agency can share about registered charities with law enforcement agencies
• requiring real estate developers and payday loan centres to file suspicious transaction reports