Episode 8
The Fight Against Crime While Balancing Law Enforcement Powers and Civil Liberties
In this episode, host Greg Dent sits down with Chris Thompson, a former lawyer who now works in the provincial government's financial crimes capacity. They dive into the topic of Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWOs), a powerful tool in the fight against financial crime that has recently been introduced in Canada, starting with British Columbia.
Chris provides a comprehensive overview of UWOs, explaining that they are court orders that compel individuals to explain the source of funds for their assets, even without a criminal conviction. He highlights how UWOs are an important tool for law enforcement, as they help overcome the challenges of tracing complex financial transactions, particularly when it comes to organized crime.
The discussion explores the controversial aspects of UWOs, such as the lower standard of proof required compared to criminal convictions. This raises concerns about the presumption of innocence and the potential for abuse. However, Chris argues that there are safeguards in place, such as the need for court approval, and that UWOs are necessary to prevent criminals from living off the proceeds of their crimes.
The episode also delves into a case study of the successful use of UWOs in the UK, the Haji-Ioannou case, which demonstrates the effectiveness of this tool in addressing suspected proceeds of crime. Additionally, the conversation touches on the practical considerations and future directions for UWOs in Canada, as other provinces may follow BC's lead in introducing this legislation.
Overall, this episode provides a comprehensive understanding of Unexplained Wealth Orders, their importance in the fight against financial crime, and the ongoing debate around balancing law enforcement powers and civil liberties.
Key Takeaways:
· Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWOs) are a court order that compels individuals to explain the source of funds for assets, even without a criminal conviction.
· UWOs are an important tool in fighting organized crime and removing the proceeds of
crime, as they help law enforcement overcome challenges in tracing complex financial transactions.
· The lower standard of proof required for UWOs(reasonable grounds to suspect) compared to criminal convictions is controversial, as it raises concerns about the presumption of innocence.
· Effective implementation of UWOs requires a balance between empowering law enforcement and protecting civil liberties, with safeguards such as court approval.
· UWOs have been successfully used in other jurisdictions, such as the high-profile Haji-Ioannou case in the UK, and are now being introduced in Canada, starting with British Columbia.
Transcript
Okay, welcome to another episode of The know your
Greg Dent:compliance podcast. I am extremely excited to be sitting
Greg Dent:down with a good friend of mine, Chris Thompson. Now, Chris is
Greg Dent:trained as a lawyer and works for the provincial government in
Greg Dent:a financial crimes capacity, so I'm his background is wonderful
Greg Dent:for the conversation about unexplained law focus, but I'll
Greg Dent:let Chris introduce himself, and then we'll get into the topic.
Greg Dent:Yes,
Chris Thompson:I'm a proud former lawyer. The practice of
Chris Thompson:law was not for me, but it was an interesting venture that led
Chris Thompson:me to where I am now, which I'm quite happy at. But I mean, if
Chris Thompson:you guys Google me. You can probably figure out where it
Chris Thompson:worked. But just as a disclaimer, I am appearing here
Chris Thompson:in my own capacity and abuse. I'm about to espouse are mine
Chris Thompson:and mine alone. So
Greg Dent:all right, you, you have not been sanctioned or
Greg Dent:officially sanctioned,
Chris Thompson:correct? Cool, cool, yeah, nor is it anything
Chris Thompson:we'd actually deal with normally. We wouldn't deal with
Chris Thompson:these. But it's a personal interest to me so well,
Greg Dent:I think, and that's actually why I reached out to
Greg Dent:you in the first place, is the intersection of your
Greg Dent:professional obligations right now and your background as a
Greg Dent:trained lawyer and having worked as a lawyer are kind of the
Greg Dent:perfect intersection for this specific topic. So with all of
Greg Dent:that being said, the topic today we're going to be talking about
Greg Dent:is unexplained wealth. Is unexplained wealth orders. And,
Greg Dent:well, I wanted to have this conversation because unexplained
Greg Dent:wealth orders are newer into Canada. In fact, new into BC,
Greg Dent:only at this point in time. But are a really important tool. You
Greg Dent:know, we spend our world in on the really trusted side. I think
Greg Dent:we spend our life in deep in fin track and fatfa is big component
Greg Dent:of unexplained wealth orders. Yes, and so I think there's some
Greg Dent:obvious kind of reasons for us to be having a conversation. But
Greg Dent:let's start at the very beginning, because some of our
Greg Dent:audience won't necessarily know what an explained wealth order
Greg Dent:some of our audience comes from other provinces. Some Yeah, so
Greg Dent:can you give us, like a two, three minute intro to what an
Greg Dent:unexplained wealth order is for a struggle?
Chris Thompson:So in in one sentence, an unexplained wealth
Chris Thompson:order is an order from a government or an investigatory
Chris Thompson:body to explain the source of funds for an asset. And the
Chris Thompson:context of that is, typically you have investigations that go
Chris Thompson:into that look into criminal bodies or criminal gangs or any
Chris Thompson:types of financial non financial crime, and criminals have to
Chris Thompson:hide the money somewhere. And a lot of the times, the
Chris Thompson:investigations, for whatever reason, don't result in criminal
Chris Thompson:charges, or they're hampered in some way, or they can't be
Chris Thompson:charged threshold, but whatever the case is, but there's these
Chris Thompson:assets that you're reasonably there's a reasonably sure are
Chris Thompson:proceeds of crime. I mean, we all know the obvious examples,
Chris Thompson:the the 18 year old kid at your high school that's driving a
Chris Thompson:Bentley, right, and mom works at Safeway, and Dad is unemployed
Chris Thompson:or something like, okay, it does not take a genius to figure out
Chris Thompson:that that kid's doing something sketchy positive, right? Yeah,
Chris Thompson:and so fat. If the Financial Action passports is very a
Chris Thompson:global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog,
Chris Thompson:they have said essentially that a country must have a non
Chris Thompson:conviction based civil forfeiture, unless their
Chris Thompson:constitution for visit, which is our civil forfeiture of the
Chris Thompson:civil forfeiture office, which is different than an unexplained
Chris Thompson:wealth order. But Fauci also says that they should also have
Chris Thompson:a law that forces someone to explain the lawful origin of
Chris Thompson:property, interesting. And so this, these UW O's are sort of
Chris Thompson:newer in kind of a worldwide context, and there's a number of
Chris Thompson:countries that have started. But as you're saying, Yeah, BC, as
Chris Thompson:far as I know, it was the first Canadian province to do
Greg Dent:Yeah. And I mean, from a BC point of view, it came
Greg Dent:straight out of the column commission, really, yes. If we
Greg Dent:go back to where the the origins of how we got here are,
Chris Thompson:I think it was recommendation, like 101 it was
Chris Thompson:like 99 that I'm saying we need people to investigate stuff. And
Chris Thompson:then number 101 was,
Greg Dent:we need a UW, L, we need a new tool in this fight.
Greg Dent:Yeah. Now I think some of our listeners are probably going to
Greg Dent:pick up on one of the real challenges, and I think we'll
Greg Dent:come back to the challenge in a second. But one of the real
Greg Dent:challenges is there's kind of a presumption of guilt all of a
Greg Dent:sudden, instead of a presumption really sets, is what, what some
Greg Dent:would say, yes, yeah. So I think I want to asterisk that up
Greg Dent:front, because I know some people are going to be just
Greg Dent:focused in on that, because that's the first thing you hear,
Greg Dent:yes, if you're not, if you're not thinking through that, well,
Greg Dent:if you're not looking at that in a bigger picture of broader
Greg Dent:sense kind of thing, yeah. I think where I wanted to kind of
Greg Dent:go first though was, Is this a tool that was necessary? I mean,
Greg Dent:I acknowledge that fat for recommends it and look like as a
Greg Dent:member of the g7 we started fat for, like Canada has clearly
Greg Dent:bought into all of this things, whether we've done a good job of
Greg Dent:implementing a recommendation. Questions that we signed on for
Greg Dent:in the first place, but many would argue we have not, but
Greg Dent:that's a that's well outside the scope, but I guess so. One are
Greg Dent:unexplained wealth orders a necessary tool, and are they
Greg Dent:being used effectively? Or where are we in that continuum? I
Greg Dent:suppose that's where I would start. Yeah,
Chris Thompson:and it depends on what you mean by the word
Chris Thompson:necessary, like it's it will be an incredibly useful tool, and
Chris Thompson:it will assist in taking on a lot of organized crime and and
Chris Thompson:not punishing offenders in the legal sense, but removing some
Chris Thompson:of the proceeds of crime. But they always say, you know, uh,
Chris Thompson:crime doesn't pay. Yeah, it does. Actually, it pays quite
Chris Thompson:well. That's, that's, that's why crime exists. Any, anyone,
Chris Thompson:anyone who works in any kind of law enforcement agency will tell
Chris Thompson:you, crime pays very well in the general case, I mean, it's,
Chris Thompson:we're all doing our best to stop and deter and detect and assess
Chris Thompson:and disrupt and all those things. But you need tools and
Chris Thompson:is it necessary? Well, if you want to be able to to take steps
Chris Thompson:to remove the proceeds of crime, given the legal infrastructure
Chris Thompson:that we have now, like the charter and all those things,
Chris Thompson:yeah, I would say yes. I mean, is the world going to collapse
Chris Thompson:if we don't have them? Yeah, going on. We haven't had them
Chris Thompson:forever, up until now, and society hasn't collapsed into
Chris Thompson:energy and chaos. But I think it's an incredibly useful tool,
Chris Thompson:or could be an incredibly useful tool, and to, again, just assist
Chris Thompson:in fighting crime in a different capacity, okay? And like
Greg Dent:just to, I want to really double down and double
Greg Dent:click on something you just said, which I think is hugely
Greg Dent:important, crime does pay. Like, that's, oh, yeah, in fact,
Greg Dent:that's why crime exists. If, if you could go and make billions
Greg Dent:of dollars selling whatever else, you probably wouldn't sell
Greg Dent:cocaine. Like, that's crime case, period, full stop. And
Greg Dent:that's, that's fundamentally why I'm why I do what I do with the
Greg Dent:company, is because I do believe that by by implementing
Greg Dent:appropriate controls in businesses, we can actually make
Greg Dent:a dent in our society and remove some of the crime that that we
Greg Dent:do see, and I like that, that I'm fully bought in, yes. So
Greg Dent:that part, I'm on board with
Chris Thompson:that to some degree, though. That's more of a
Chris Thompson:preventative thing, like UWS roll out for the fact, well,
Greg Dent:yeah. But if you, if you can prevent it, if you can
Greg Dent:make it, yeah, if you make it less likely that people are
Greg Dent:going to get to keep the keep the money at the end of all
Greg Dent:this, yeah, that's true. They're they're less likely to to want
Greg Dent:to do it in the first place. It becomes less appealing. Yes. Now
Greg Dent:UW owes have been in place in other jurisdictions. Yes. And I
Greg Dent:know you did a bit of reading into that ahead of time. Maybe
Greg Dent:walk us through. We were talking about off fire. We were talking
Greg Dent:about the case in London. That seems like a particularly
Greg Dent:interesting, useful to illustrate why these are
Greg Dent:important tools in the fight of in financial investigation,
Greg Dent:support,
Chris Thompson:yeah, and that's, I think, one of the one
Chris Thompson:of the aspects of this being a relatively new thing, is that
Chris Thompson:it's been used. You start with sort of the most egregious
Chris Thompson:cases, and you don't want to go with a brand new law the court
Chris Thompson:and try and test its constitutionality like a
Chris Thompson:marginal case, right? You want to go in there where the case,
Chris Thompson:where you literally your brief, can be like, dear court, duh
Chris Thompson:Stein, the plaintiffs, right? And that seems to have been the
Chris Thompson:case for a lot of the UWS that I've seen so far. So the
Chris Thompson:example, I thought a lot of this is, is from a report, and it's a
Chris Thompson:star Wealth Report, which you can just Google. It's, it's
Chris Thompson:quite interesting, if you like reading 128 pages on obscure
Chris Thompson:legal
Greg Dent:so for listeners, probably do, actually, to be
Greg Dent:honest. So
Chris Thompson:Well, probably 100% of the people at this table
Chris Thompson:do, exactly, yeah. So this is a case. That's the Haji ever case
Chris Thompson:out of the UK. This was 2018 so there was an a guy who worked in
Chris Thompson:the government of Azerbaijan. He moved to London, he and his
Chris Thompson:wife, and over the previous 10 years, so from oh six to 2016
Chris Thompson:she spent 16 million pounds, about 20 million US at Harris,
Chris Thompson:which is a luxury department store. They bought a house for
Chris Thompson:13 point 2 million US dollars, which were expenses that were
Chris Thompson:vastly out of keeping of what her husband could make in his
Chris Thompson:own home country. And their house was owned by a British
Chris Thompson:Virgin Islands BVI company linked to both her and her
Chris Thompson:husband. So this drew the attention of the UK authorities,
Chris Thompson:as also her husband, had been convicted in 2016 of
Chris Thompson:misappropriation and fraud. He got 15 years in jail and was
Chris Thompson:ordered to pay $39 million and so some of the funnier things is
Chris Thompson:like she spends $20 million at least $2 million at Herods a
Chris Thompson:year. And there was one I found she spent, uh. Let me pull it up
Chris Thompson:here. She spent, I think, 30 she spent 600,000 pounds in one day
Chris Thompson:on a spending spree. She also spent, I think, like, $30,000 in
Chris Thompson:one shot to Godiva chocolates. That's
Greg Dent:a couple of chocolates. That's a couple of
Chris Thompson:that. Yes, I don't know how long would it
Chris Thompson:take you to eat $30,000 of Godiva, but that's
Greg Dent:a pretty high quality job, true.
Chris Thompson:So not exactly a sympathetic case. And so here's
Chris Thompson:a case where, okay, this guy's been convicted in, I assume, he
Chris Thompson:was convicted in Azerbaijan and sentenced in order to prison.
Chris Thompson:And this woman's later living in London with what are kind of,
Chris Thompson:obviously proceeds of crime, like, there's, there's no way
Chris Thompson:this actually buy this money legally. So then the question
Chris Thompson:becomes, okay, if you don't have unexplained welfares, how do you
Chris Thompson:prevent this type of of living large based off your crime? And
Chris Thompson:I mean, she's not convicted of a crime, you know, it's arguable
Chris Thompson:whether or not she's done anything wrong, like she's just
Chris Thompson:been given a blank check from her husband, and maybe she
Chris Thompson:hasn't, but still, this is the person. These are the proceeds
Chris Thompson:of crime. And if you want to make crime not pay, you got to
Chris Thompson:go after these types of things. You absolutely have to, yeah,
Chris Thompson:and so they did, and that was the first case.
Greg Dent:So you started by talking, and I think we didn't
Greg Dent:go into the distinction which I'm hopefully vote to make,
Greg Dent:which is you started by talking about this is an investigative
Greg Dent:tool, yes, and this case just ended up in what sounded more
Greg Dent:like forfeiture. In fact. Can we just parse the parse part? Parse
Greg Dent:apart for our listeners a little bit for a second, the difference
Greg Dent:there between forfeiture and, yeah,
Chris Thompson:investigation in some cases. I mean, it might
Chris Thompson:legally, there's a difference. There might be a distinction
Chris Thompson:without a difference, for the for the general public, but an
Chris Thompson:unexplained wealth order, in and of itself, is just an order from
Chris Thompson:the court for a subject to provide information on the
Chris Thompson:source of welfare property. So like, Hey, okay, you know, haul
Chris Thompson:someone out of gym class and get them to explain where they got
Chris Thompson:the money for their Bentley like that. That's it. It's a court
Chris Thompson:order. You have to go to court. You have to file a bunch of
Chris Thompson:stuff, and the court will say, yes, okay, you can make this
Chris Thompson:person tell you where they got the money from. And that's it.
Chris Thompson:It doesn't give you the authorization to seize it.
Chris Thompson:Doesn't give you any other powers. You can't freeze it, you
Chris Thompson:can't do any of those things. You just have the power to
Chris Thompson:compel the person to provide the information. And then, if the
Chris Thompson:information is insufficient, well, there's, then, when I was
Chris Thompson:looking into that, now, there's, there's three possibilities,
Chris Thompson:yeah, I
Chris Thompson:think this is not, yeah. Okay, so court grants the order. Well,
Chris Thompson:let me back up a sec. So what the what the person has to
Chris Thompson:provide is an affidavit to the court. So there's going to be
Chris Thompson:some kind of investigator they have to provide. They have to
Chris Thompson:swear an affidavit to a court saying, and this is BC specific.
Chris Thompson:It varies a little bit around the world, but the idea is the same.
Greg Dent:And I should say, I think we've got a little bit
Greg Dent:wrong. Manitoba has also introduced them, but hasn't used
Greg Dent:them yet. Oh, okay, so, but BC is the first to use them, and
Greg Dent:clearly, directionally, it seems likely that other provinces will
Greg Dent:follow suit. That's I like to joke that BC lives in the future
Greg Dent:on the water regular, yep,
Chris Thompson:so the bleeding edge, yeah,
Greg Dent:exactly. Yeah, yes.
Chris Thompson:So if you think you know the high school kids
Chris Thompson:mentally is proceeds of crime. What do you have to say is on an
Chris Thompson:affidavit, there's a reason to suspect a person is involved in
Chris Thompson:illegal activities or as a politically exposed person, you
Chris Thompson:have to have a reason to believe that the person has an interest
Chris Thompson:in the underlying property that you're looking to investigate.
Chris Thompson:The property has to be worth more than $75,000 so you can't
Chris Thompson:be like, Hey, where's that? Watch from PFO. Like, No. Uncle
Chris Thompson:counts that. And there has to be one, a serious question to be
Chris Thompson:tried, that one of these three things are true, that the known
Chris Thompson:sources of income are insufficient to acquire or
Chris Thompson:maintain the property. The property was used to engage in
Chris Thompson:unlawful activity, or the property was acquired or
Chris Thompson:maintained as a result of unlawful activity. And again,
Chris Thompson:none of these are beyond a reasonable doubt or even balance
Chris Thompson:of probabilities. So balance of probabilities is 50% plus one,
Chris Thompson:yeah, the someone at trial, or fact, a court, whoever has to
Chris Thompson:find that it's more likely than not that something has something
Chris Thompson:happened. That's not the standard here. You've got reason
Chris Thompson:to suspect the person is involved in legal activities.
Chris Thompson:You have to have a reason to believe that the person has the
Chris Thompson:interest in the property. And the legal term, serious question
Chris Thompson:to be tried, basically means it has to make sense what you're
Chris Thompson:saying, like you can't just ponder stuff up out of thin air.
Greg Dent:So a lot of our listeners will become will be
Greg Dent:familiar with the concept of reasonable grounds to suspect,
Greg Dent:because that's when the threshold for a suspicious
Greg Dent:transaction report must be filed okay for fin track filing
Greg Dent:purposes. And so this distinction becomes really
Greg Dent:important, and really, to me, interesting actually, because
Greg Dent:what you're saying is that i. Uh, an unexplained wealth order
Greg Dent:doesn't rise to the same level as a as if I'm if I'm hearing
Greg Dent:you right anyway, doesn't have to have absolute fact, or
Greg Dent:doesn't have to be beyond reasonable doubt. No, no, that's
Greg Dent:interesting.
Chris Thompson:And that's, again, the civil standard.
Chris Thompson:There's no There's no jail time. People's liberty isn't knows
Chris Thompson:liberty is threatened here, so you you don't need that beyond a
Chris Thompson:reasonable doubt standard, okay? And that's where some of the
Chris Thompson:controversy comes from. Is people saying, like, Well, hey,
Chris Thompson:they haven't been convicted of a crime. They haven't been any of
Chris Thompson:this stuff that the onus to prove your innocence is put on a
Chris Thompson:person who owns the asset. Now, legally speaking, like
Chris Thompson:conceptually, maybe that's true, depending on on how
Chris Thompson:sophisticated your understanding of criminal law is. But to be
Chris Thompson:found guilty of something, you have to be charged with a crime.
Chris Thompson:Nobody's being charged with a crime, therefore, you're not
Chris Thompson:innocent of anything anyway, like you're not guilty, you're
Chris Thompson:not innocent. There's no possibility of you being found
Chris Thompson:guilty of something because you're not being charged with a
Chris Thompson:crime, right? So there's no onus on you to prove your innocence
Chris Thompson:of anything because you're not being charged with a crime.
Chris Thompson:There's an onus on you to to show that this property at
Chris Thompson:question isn't the isn't the proceeds of crime, or at least
Chris Thompson:that you acquired it illegally. And I guess the
Greg Dent:debater in me would then say, sure, but if I can't
Greg Dent:prove that I acquired this legally, the assumption is that
Greg Dent:I acquired illegally. That's correct, and that is an
Greg Dent:interesting term from how we normally view a lot of things in
Greg Dent:Canada. I think
Chris Thompson:maybe I mean, if you're used to looking at at
Chris Thompson:things in the criminal context, that's true, yeah. But anyone
Chris Thompson:who's ever filed their taxes knows that I was hoping it
Chris Thompson:brings it's all back to tax. I worked as a tax lawyer, followed
Chris Thompson:up tax there's certain situations in life where the
Chris Thompson:subject or the person who owns an asset question is really the
Chris Thompson:only one that can make sense of something that happens. So I
Chris Thompson:wouldn't expect CRA to file my taxes, because I know what I did
Chris Thompson:during the year. I know how my accounting structure set up. I
Chris Thompson:know. Well, I mean, I, you know, earn a wage. It's fairly
Chris Thompson:straightforward, like CRA could probably be pretty close to my
Chris Thompson:taxes. But, you know, I own a house and I got rental income,
Chris Thompson:they're not going to be able to parse through all my bank
Chris Thompson:accounts and figure out how much I spent on rental maintenance
Chris Thompson:like they're just not right without outrageous amounts of
Chris Thompson:efforts. So there's a quote with something like the the taxpayers
Chris Thompson:in the unique position of knowing all the information
Chris Thompson:about the subject, right? So what it's the the theory of
Chris Thompson:these unexplained wealth orders is that it's not practical for
Chris Thompson:the government to figure out where you got the money to buy
Chris Thompson:this asset from. Like, that's going to be prohibitively
Chris Thompson:complicated for someone who has to compel bank records and
Chris Thompson:transfers and a lot of these assets. I mean, if, if you're
Chris Thompson:really good at money laundering, the money will come from
Chris Thompson:overseas, like it's if you paid for your Bentley with a check
Chris Thompson:drawn on a Panama bank, yeah? Like, good luck, right? It's
Chris Thompson:going to take us years to figure that out, to be able to track it
Chris Thompson:down, and we just don't have the resources to do that. Okay, so I
Chris Thompson:mean unexplained wealth orders are a means to level the playing
Chris Thompson:field between law enforcement and criminals, because law
Chris Thompson:enforcement just doesn't have the resources to figure all this
Chris Thompson:stuff out, but it's very, very easy for someone. Most of the
Chris Thompson:time we can get into it's not but most of the time it's fairly
Chris Thompson:easy for someone who legitimately acquired asset, an
Chris Thompson:asset, to prove how to legitimately acquire it. Like,
Chris Thompson:if, I mean, I own a house, like, okay, Chris, who I own this
Chris Thompson:house? How do you bought this house? Okay, well, here's the
Chris Thompson:mortgage documents, here's the money, here's where I sold my
Chris Thompson:old house. Here's the bank records where it all came
Chris Thompson:through. Here's my income for the last like, it's easy, I can
Chris Thompson:do it in 10 minutes, right? Fair enough.
Greg Dent:And in fact, going back to the taxes, your your
Greg Dent:taxes would probably support your case, because that's
Greg Dent:legitimately where the money came and you weren't trying to
Greg Dent:hide, yeah, I think you weren't trying to hide any money into
Greg Dent:that. So, yes, yeah, yes, yes, of course. No, that perfect.
Chris Thompson:So I think now, sorry, the one part where it
Chris Thompson:does get interesting is if it's like, I bought this house 15
Chris Thompson:years ago. Well, I can't get the bank records. No banks keep
Chris Thompson:records for 789, years. And I don't know if anyone's even
Chris Thompson:looked at that yet, but the cases in BC are the ones again,
Chris Thompson:where they're, what are called unsympathetic defendants, where
Chris Thompson:it's like, well, yes, but yeah, there's going to be at some
Chris Thompson:point, I think someone's going to say, like, Hey, man, yeah, I
Chris Thompson:had a great night at a casino in on my 50th birthday, 17 years
Chris Thompson:ago, and then you I deposited the money as a to the bank
Chris Thompson:account. But the like, the bank records are long, so that's, you
Chris Thompson:know, that's a bridge someone's gonna have to cross at some
Chris Thompson:point. It doesn't sound like a fund bridge track to cross, I
Chris Thompson:gotta be honest. Well, then the other side of this, maybe then
Chris Thompson:the government will just think, like. Right? The detractors of
Chris Thompson:the people who are arguing against this law, they're going
Chris Thompson:to say stuff like, and it's legitimate that, you know, it
Chris Thompson:can be abused. Taxpayers may not have the documentation, like all
Chris Thompson:of that's true in or at least it's plausible, yeah, now there
Chris Thompson:are safeguards in that this stuff has to go through a court,
Chris Thompson:like someone in the law enforcement to kind of, like, I
Chris Thompson:wouldn't be able to just go and see someone Bentley and, like,
Chris Thompson:start driving it around. Well, thank goodness. And that's I
Chris Thompson:probably would be able to fit in the Bentley. But anyway, you
Chris Thompson:know, a lot of the almost any law enforcement power can be
Chris Thompson:abused, but that's what we have the courts for. And I think
Chris Thompson:most, most law enforcement agents and most law enforcement
Chris Thompson:agencies, almost all the time, are trying to do, you know,
Chris Thompson:proper, defective investigations. And I've, I've
Chris Thompson:been in situations where I'm like, Okay, well, I asked for
Chris Thompson:some information. The person's like, Hey, man, X, happened?
Chris Thompson:It's no one's fault. Like, I had a flood in the basement 10 years
Chris Thompson:ago. Here's the records. Like, the sewage backed up, like you
Chris Thompson:want the box, like it's all yours, man. Like, oh, that's
Chris Thompson:okay. You keep and you give people the benefit of the doubt.
Chris Thompson:Okay, if there's sort of legitimate reason to, but again,
Chris Thompson:this is this, UW, Bo, is the one situation while you're not
Chris Thompson:giving people the benefit of the doubt as a policy, yeah. But if
Chris Thompson:there's, I think there's different reasons where, if it's
Chris Thompson:if you've got something that's wildly uncharacteristic with
Chris Thompson:your income, well, you should have the paperwork, especially
Chris Thompson:if it's recent.
Greg Dent:So it's interesting. I think that, like as as we've
Greg Dent:talked through this, to me the the most obvious use case,
Greg Dent:immediate use case for this that I think will be interesting when
Greg Dent:it eventually happens, is there the common example of where real
Greg Dent:estate brokerages are failing in their contract obligations is
Greg Dent:when the homemaker or the student buys the west side of
Greg Dent:house and Anyway, it's such a it's such a cliche example that
Greg Dent:I think it's almost a meme at this point.
Chris Thompson:But we've had a few of those where you pull land
Chris Thompson:title and it's like, yeah, owners, so and so, student, 99%
Chris Thompson:and then 1% mom in where, right?
Greg Dent:That question, and now suddenly, maybe that's,
Greg Dent:would that be a good example of a good example of a case where a
Greg Dent:nine planned author might be useful
Chris Thompson:if there's ties to crime? Yeah. I mean, it's
Chris Thompson:again, it's not, it's not a fishing expedition. Okay, we
Chris Thompson:cannot just look at, you know, the the government, or whatever,
Chris Thompson:the civil forfeiture office, or anyone the police. Just can't go
Chris Thompson:wandering around saying like you are an Aston Martin, tell me how
Chris Thompson:you know how you buy it. No, if you're just a law abiding
Chris Thompson:citizen, and there's no reasonable grounds to suspect
Chris Thompson:them, all these other pieces that you're actually tied to
Chris Thompson:organized crime, you're not
Greg Dent:going to get it on its own welfare. If that third
Greg Dent:part of that three part test that that actually was
Greg Dent:important, but I think is the part that kind of gives us some
Greg Dent:comfort and protection, I guess is what you're suggesting. Well,
Greg Dent:there's
Chris Thompson:a the the third part is a serious question to be
Chris Thompson:tried is the non sources of income or insufficient
Chris Thompson:properties? Yeah? We Yeah. We still have to go to court with a
Chris Thompson:bunch of facts, right? We can't just show up with some dude with
Chris Thompson:a shiny thing and say, like, hey, what that shiny thing? Can
Chris Thompson:you get him to prove to us how he bought it? Like, no, there's
Chris Thompson:a process to go through,
Greg Dent:so not a tool of bureaucratic welfare, not that
Greg Dent:I'm aware of. Okay, yes, yeah. Okay, so I think we've started
Greg Dent:to cover this a fair bit, and I think I just want to kind of
Greg Dent:make sure we've addressed it, because I think it's the one
Greg Dent:thing that people generally kind of get their backs up against
Greg Dent:the wall, as you quite rightly said, the BC liberties, Civil
Greg Dent:Liberties Association, sorry, came out pretty hard against
Greg Dent:unexplainable authorities, yeah. And what's the, what's the case
Greg Dent:against? And, I guess, what's the, what's the rationale, where
Greg Dent:I think, where you think this probably passes the smell test
Greg Dent:that at Port of all, yeah.
Chris Thompson:So the the case against again, is, like you were
Chris Thompson:saying, is we have a presumption of accidents, yeah, the general
Chris Thompson:public writ large has the right to just go about our daily lives
Chris Thompson:without harassment for police or any investigatory body
Chris Thompson:generally, right? And the idea is that in order for be this
Chris Thompson:subject of the scrutiny of the state, they must have some kind
Chris Thompson:of evidence or probable cause, whatever your standard is, like
Chris Thompson:that, there are we have, we generally have a right to be
Chris Thompson:left alone, right? Yeah, and this is a situation where people
Chris Thompson:feel that your your right to be left alone and your right to be
Chris Thompson:innocent until proven guilty, that those two things are kind
Chris Thompson:of being violated, one of the other rights, again, in the
Chris Thompson:charter, or not in the charter, sorry, but one of our rights is
Chris Thompson:until proven guilty. Like there's a fundamental concept in
Chris Thompson:in our criminal system, our criminal systems, and pretty
Chris Thompson:much everyone's around the world, yeah, that you know, we
Chris Thompson:would sooner let 99 guilty. People go for free, then put one
Chris Thompson:innocent person behind bars. And I think that right way to go.
Chris Thompson:And then it's certainly frustrating in law enforcement
Chris Thompson:jobs at times, but you know, it's not, it's not supposed to
Chris Thompson:be easy. It's not supposed to be easy to lock someone up or take
Chris Thompson:the money or, you know, give them sanctions. And so the
Chris Thompson:opponents say this concept of we shouldn't have to prove our
Chris Thompson:innocence, and this concept of basically being left alone by
Chris Thompson:the state unless we've done something wrong, both of those
Chris Thompson:are at odds with the idea of unexplained wealth over quite
Chris Thompson:and like the Azerbaijani lady, has she done anything criminal?
Chris Thompson:I don't know. Maybe not, like there was no allegations. She
Chris Thompson:hasn't been charged with anything. She hasn't been
Chris Thompson:convicted in hasn't been convicted in anything. All she's
Chris Thompson:done is married some guy who probably extorted millions of
Chris Thompson:dollars out of whoever, and then she is just living
Greg Dent:off the luxury. Yeah, she somehow managed to spend 30
Greg Dent:million of dollars. Well, her husband made about a million
Greg Dent:dollars in the same period of time, exactly.
Chris Thompson:Yeah, yeah. And so the the the next step of
Chris Thompson:that. So my rationale is, my rationale, I think everyone's
Chris Thompson:rational is, is it, is it conscionable to think that,
Chris Thompson:okay, just because someone isn't convicted of a crime, that they
Chris Thompson:should be able to live off the proceeds of crimes, yeah, and
Chris Thompson:if, like, you take the counter example, like, that's, you know,
Chris Thompson:brother a and Brother B. Brother B's a drug dealer, earns much
Chris Thompson:money, buys brother a, a Bentley in a house and all these other
Chris Thompson:things. Okay, well, do we want to let brother a keep the beta
Chris Thompson:in the house? I kind of think no. I mean, brother a hasn't
Chris Thompson:committed a crime. He hasn't done anything wrong. I just
Chris Thompson:don't think in in sort of a legal system writ large and fat,
Chris Thompson:if agrees with me, on a worldwide basis, that it just
Chris Thompson:doesn't make sense, it would offend the sensibilities of most
Chris Thompson:people, yeah, to see like the little brothers of drug dealers
Chris Thompson:being able to keep their Bentleys and all these other
Chris Thompson:proceeds of crime forever.
Greg Dent:It does make it a bit easier to become a criminal with
Greg Dent:while you personally might not be advanced if your entire
Greg Dent:family and the ones you love or whatever will be then, yeah,
Greg Dent:you're probably right, yeah.
Chris Thompson:One of the other things you got to think about,
Chris Thompson:too with these unexplained wealth orders is it? One of the
Chris Thompson:goals was to really go after the heads of organized crime gangs.
Chris Thompson:Okay? Because they're typically structured in a way that the
Chris Thompson:people up at the top aren't the ones going up and committing the
Chris Thompson:day to day Crimean, but they're the ones that have the the
Chris Thompson:mansions. They're crimers. Do crime. They crying. You need to
Chris Thompson:stop crying. Carry on. Yeah. So yeah, the the heads of organized
Chris Thompson:crime gangs, you know, the money funnels up and and the low level
Chris Thompson:guys that keep getting that, getting charged with whatever it
Chris Thompson:is that they're doing, yeah. And if you want to go after the
Chris Thompson:upper level Echelon people, it's going to be really, really hard
Chris Thompson:to get everyone to get everyone to flip on the way up. And an
Chris Thompson:easier way to do it is just take all their stuff, right if you
Chris Thompson:can prove that all of this stuff, or at least with an
Chris Thompson:unexplained wealth order, if they're unable to prove that all
Chris Thompson:of their assets, or whatever assets you're investigating,
Chris Thompson:weren't proceeds of crime, weren't not proceeds of crimes,
Chris Thompson:or too many negatives, if the upper, if the upper members of
Chris Thompson:the if the Crimean can't prove a legitimate source of their
Chris Thompson:assets, right, then I think it's, I don't think anyone's
Chris Thompson:going to be against taking toys away from gangsters. Yeah.
Greg Dent:Well, I think that's, that's probably the more
Greg Dent:sympathetic approach to this, which is, you know, like the the
Greg Dent:guy living in the $20 million mansion who has hundreds of
Greg Dent:people selling little baggies of coke? Yeah, I don't like Coke.
Greg Dent:Is my thing today, but I've mentioned it twice, being a
Greg Dent:lawyer,
Chris Thompson:our stereotypical Yeah, but crap, I
Chris Thompson:went BMW to damn it. Oh, it's black, but the turn signals
Chris Thompson:work. I use them all the time.
Greg Dent:Yeah, so, but anyhow, I think that's that becomes a
Greg Dent:much more sympathetic argument for general people
Chris Thompson:to accept. I think, yeah. And one of the
Chris Thompson:other reasons too is a lot of the times it's really hard, if
Chris Thompson:not impossible, to get documents from other jurisdictions. Okay,
Chris Thompson:so if you want to prove that that the particular source of
Chris Thompson:funds for something was illegitimate and it comes from
Chris Thompson:Saudi Arabia or Lithuania or, I think the Philippines, don't
Chris Thompson:quote me on that one, though, like there's some jurisdictions
Chris Thompson:where various law enforcement agencies in Canada have
Chris Thompson:agreements with various law enforcement agencies around the
Chris Thompson:world, both civil and criminal. Criminal, it's typically called
Chris Thompson:an mlat, a mutual legal assistance treaty. It will take
Chris Thompson:years, right? Okay? And so if you are a criminal, and you run
Chris Thompson:your your funds through five countries, and it takes two
Chris Thompson:years to get an mlat, and take it 10 years to figure out where
Chris Thompson:the money came from, and that's just not feasible. So criminals
Chris Thompson:know. Of that, and then they use that. And so these orders are an
Chris Thompson:attempt to sort of level the playing field between the
Chris Thompson:criminals that understand the financial obscurity system, or
Chris Thompson:how to obscure finances, and law enforcement.
Greg Dent:Which is, which is why? I mean, I guess if I, if I
Greg Dent:go federal policing, would become a federal policing force
Greg Dent:who had the tools like unexplained wealth orders is
Greg Dent:probably better suited to fight some of these transactional
Greg Dent:crimes, which is what you're suggesting. Well,
Chris Thompson:I mean, we have federal police, we have the
Chris Thompson:RCMP. I'm not sure that it's necessarily a lack of policing
Chris Thompson:effort. I think it's just a function of how the system works
Chris Thompson:like the international system, yeah, and I know the steps
Chris Thompson:involved, that was at a conference the other day. They
Chris Thompson:said it takes, you know, the the investigator has to draft an
Chris Thompson:order, and then they send it, I think, to crown. And then that
Chris Thompson:takes a while, and then it comes back with some corrections, and
Chris Thompson:it goes back and forth, and it gets approved somewhere else,
Chris Thompson:and then it has to go to some office, and then the office
Chris Thompson:sends it. It all has to get officially translated into,
Chris Thompson:like, Dutch or something. But then the lady who does the
Chris Thompson:official Dutch translations is on a two week kayaking trip,
Chris Thompson:and, like, I don't know Nunavut, or whatever it was, and so she
Chris Thompson:has to come back. And then the translation happens, and it gets
Chris Thompson:sent over to the Netherlands. And then, I don't know whatever
Chris Thompson:Dutch guy does the translation. Like, it's this, it's nuts. And
Chris Thompson:I kind of liken it to, this is my standard analogy. Do you know
Chris Thompson:how tennis? This is how I understand tennis. It used to be
Chris Thompson:played. So do you know where the numbers in tennis come from?
Chris Thompson:Like the zero, 1530, 3040, okay, no. So it used to be that when
Chris Thompson:you started, you both stood at like a line, which, let's call
Chris Thompson:zero, okay, when you won a point, you went 15 feet ahead.
Chris Thompson:Oh, and when you won that point, you went to 30 feet, you know,
Chris Thompson:in that point, you went to 40 feet. And one, when you won that
Chris Thompson:you won the match. That's kind, I feel that sort of like how the
Chris Thompson:approvals process in law enforcement works. You start at
Chris Thompson:line zero, and then you go with your supervisor, and then you
Chris Thompson:hit the ball back and forth. And eventually you hit a winner.
Chris Thompson:Then they approve it. You move up to line 15, which is the next
Chris Thompson:level of approval. Then you hit the ball back and forth a bunch
Chris Thompson:of times. Eventually you hit a winner. Then you go up to line
Chris Thompson:30, and then, like line 40 is whatever director of the
Chris Thompson:institution you're running, who has to ultimately sign off on
Chris Thompson:this thing, and then who might actually get you somewhere all
Chris Thompson:of a sudden, or who hits it back. And then you have to go
Chris Thompson:back to line zero and start over again. That sounds terrible. It
Chris Thompson:is. Yeah, I have said My job is 80% pretty good, 10% awesome,
Chris Thompson:and 10% mind. I'm only tedious, and some of that is the mind
Chris Thompson:Emily tedious part. It's just this endless series of back and
Chris Thompson:forth right now that's not all the time. That's fairly rare.
Chris Thompson:Most of the time, the stuff gets touched, like once or twice, but
Chris Thompson:for something where it's like overseas requests are everyone
Chris Thompson:knows they're a pain, and they take forever, and it's you're
Chris Thompson:kind of coordinating among a bunch of different institutions
Chris Thompson:and dealing with different languages in different time
Chris Thompson:zones, and it's a pain. So these I explained wealth orders are
Chris Thompson:kind of a means of leveling that playing field between the
Chris Thompson:criminals and
Greg Dent:investigate what right? Okay, and really making
Greg Dent:the the transactional side of it a little bit a little bit
Greg Dent:easier, makes sense? Yeah, no, no, that makes sense. Cool.
Greg Dent:Well, thank you so much. This has been a really, kind of a
Greg Dent:helpful analysis in unexplained wealth orders. Ultimately, I
Greg Dent:think why they're important. And I think the case that that they
Greg Dent:that they may not the civil liberties they might impact, let
Greg Dent:me put it that way, and ending that whole balance of whether
Greg Dent:they're good or bad, and necessary or evil or whatever, I
Greg Dent:think we've kind of hopefully kind of gone through that enough
Greg Dent:that our listeners gotta get a sense of that. So thank you so
Greg Dent:much, Chris for for understanding the topic and
Greg Dent:being willing to spend your time with me talking about it. Happy
Greg Dent:to be here, and thanks for being also awesome. Thanks. Thank you.
Greg Dent:Bye.
