Canada and Anti-Money Laundering
An insight into anti-money laundering is provided by A Preventive Guide for Small Business & Currency Exchanges in Canada published by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which is the Canadian national police service and an agency of the Ministry of Public Safety Canada.
The Guide indicates that one of the roles of the RCMP within Canada’s Initiative to combat money laundering is informing the public. Therefore it describes money laundering as something that can happen anywhere, anytime, and one may not even be aware of having been involved in it.
While defining money laundering is clear and similar to what has been repeatedly discussed previously, some issues related to money laundering discussed in the Preventive Guide have not been discussed yet. For example, the Guide provides a term “willful blindness” as a situation when a person who has become aware of the need for some inquiry does not make the inquiry as he/she does not wish to know the truth and prefers to remain ignorant. There is also an example of willful blindness in the Guide. It is as follows: “A salesperson encounters a customer who wants to buy a consumer good or service with $25,000 cash. The customer produces a gym bag containing $25,000 in $20 and $50 bills. In the vast majority of modern Canadian commerce, this is not a normal business transaction, and this method of payment is highly unusual. Though the salesperson instantly suspects something is out of the ordinary, they chose to ignore their suspicion so as not to jeopardize an easy sale.â€