The following was primarily contributed by an In-Sights reader who prefers to be uncredited:
BC Liberal Party leader Andrew Wilkinson has faced difficult questions in the past about Liberal links to corruption.
Wilkinson once acted for corrupt Chinese tycoon Ni Ritao’s company Sun Wave Forest Products, which breached an agreement to resurrect an abandoned pulp mill, costing the City of Prince Rupert millions of dollars.
A South China Morning Post investigation into the case revealed the businessman lied to a Vancouver court about his convictions for graft and forgery, falsely claiming he had been fully exonerated.
According to the Globe and Mail:
Mr. Wilkinson acted as a lawyer on the matter until March 27, 2012, when Bill Belsey, the vice-president of the B.C. Liberal Party and an employee of Sun Wave, assumed responsibility for the case, according to documents filed in court.
What amazes me about the BC Liberals is their belief that no one, no reporter, no investigator, no amateur sleuth would ever bother to dig deep enough to find the rot.
But the rot keeps surfacing..
During CKNW’s Linda Steele show, Global reporter Sam Cooper responded to several CasinoGate questions. He discussed statements by Fred Pinnock, the former RCMP commander of the RCMP illegal gambling unit in BC.
Among claims of the retired policeman:
- Organized criminal activity was running amok.
- The BC Liberal government, Rich Coleman, top police officials, and the BC gambling regulator all knew of the extent of organized crime’s money laundering in BC.
- They new how the Triads and drug gangs were laundering money.
- They knew what needed to be done to halt it.
Nevertheless, they chose to do almost nothing.
Mr. Cooper did not fault Pinnock’s assertions. Instead, he provided additional details:
…this was all about the revenue. BC Lottery turned a blind eye. Big politicians in the BC Liberals turned a blind eye and the people operating the casinos turned a blind eye…
Mr. Pinnock said he believes that the RCMP’s provincial policing contract was used as a tool by the BC Liberals, or Mr. Coleman, allegedly, it’s been suggested, may have used that so that the RCMP didn’t investigate. If that’s true, that just takes the level of some sort of potential corruption to a level that would have to be dealt with by an independent public inquiry…
…Unless more people go to jail, maybe even white collar people lose their jobs or worse, I don’t believe the problem will go away in BC. It may just hide for a while but if the focus continues to be on revenue flowing in from international wealthy people in BC, this problem won’t go away. It will come back hard.
As the main obstacles to naming names and initiating prosecutions, he cited the threat of lawsuits from BC casinos and provincial government reluctance to act.
Mr. Cooper predicted that as long the Premier waffles and equivocates, money laundering will continue. He says the NDP may be choosing to follow the BC Liberals’ lead, which is to look the other way and use the proceeds of crime as a helpful cash cow.
On the NDP’s resistance to a public inquiry, where the public is vexed by facing continued political hesitation, Cooper said:
…I don’t think they want to let that genie out of the bottle…
It’s my belief that federal prosecutors are still building a case around some of these alleged international criminals…
Is Mr. Cooper hinting that the federal government is preparing to proceed with their own prosecutions, even if BC refuses to act?
Why on earth did John Horgan tell Vaughn Palmer that a deeper provincial investigation isn’t worth either the time or money? Given mounting support for a full inquiry, how can the Premier possibly maintain the same defence now?
If the feds disclose evidence at a future trial that indicates provincial neglect and dereliction in pursuing crimes associated with gambling, what happens to public trust and support for both the BC Liberals and the BC NDP?
The only question might be:
Why did each of the two main BC parties hang themselves with their own noose?
Fred Pinnock has been talking publicly for ten years about the involvement of criminals in BC’s gambling industry. Yet BC politicians feign surprise. Pinnock’s words were noted in this four year old In-Sights article:
Money laundering and casinos, who knew?
Financial fraud-hunter Mark Cohodes has simple advice if the BC Government wants to eliminate money laundering at racetracks and casinos:
Seize assets. Prosecute. Pay whistleblowers.
An ex-Wall Street short seller’s drastic advice for saving Vancouver’s economy — and itself
Cohodes retweeted this frightening item.
You don’t get to this level without a mountain of fraud. Hold onto your hats folks. We’re just scratching the surface with the money launderers. Wait until we get to the homegrown lending frauds. @AlderLaneeggs #VanRE https://t.co/ChubBvIlNC
— Hal Jam (@hal_jam) July 15, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
in-sights.ca 
None of this is new to the small percentage of folks who have followed the real diggers (not Duggers) like Norm, Mackin, Holman, Lew, Merv and Laila (oh how I miss her, although I know she is in a happy place).
Where it is surprising to me and shows the level of detachment, are folks like Bruce Allen. A year ago he was one of Christy Clark’s biggest cheerleaders and in one of his Reality Check segments called Rich Coleman a good guy.
Only now, since someone put the “Dirty Money” report in front of him, is he critical of the former government.
How someone as well read and ntelligent as Mr. Allen, could be so blind is disturbing and doesn’t lend much hope for the lunch buckets ever catching on or taking a serious interest.
In ten years this topic will be looked back on just like BC Rail with the usual “why was nothing done” questions.
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I’m afraid that Horgan is showing that he the coward that most thought he was.
Why the fear?
It is my belief that Vision Vancouver was and still are, willing accomplices in criminal money laundering in BC. That his chief advisor, Geoff Meggs was a former Vision Vancouver councillor, means he is involved; [edited for legal reasons]
Geoff Meggs is also a great supporter of the Broadway SkyTrain subway, which is being built, solely as a tool to up-zone properties along the subway route, to allow Vision Vancouver friendly land speculators and property developers to assemble land to build high rise condos, mainly for the overseas crowd, close the circle of the Vancouver Model of money laundering.
The $3 billion Broadway subway is being built for no other reason, as traffic flows along the route are far below what is needed to justify a subway.
So we now have the BC Liberals; Vision Vancouver; the Premier’s office, Translink, the RCMP, the VPD and all the property developer elites now involved in the long poisonous money laundering trail.
Horgan is a coward, because Horgan knows that a criminal inquiry will show BC for what it is, a tawdry 3rd world country where the politics and the law are utterly corrupt.
Who is not afraid to bell the cat? Horgan, the BC Liberals, Vision Vancouver, the RCMP, TransLink and the rest of the corrupt crowd that call themselves the creme de la creme, certainly are!
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can an ordinary citizen ask the RCMP to investigate? or are we that insignificance?
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As an added irony, Bill Belsey was the mla for Prince Rupert before going to work for Sun Wave at the time they were abandoning their financial obligations to Prince Rupert regarding Watson Island mill. Representing the people?
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Tweaked by the reference in this post about Horgan telling Palmer a deeper inquiry wasn’t worth the time or money, I went looking for the quote and found it in this article:
https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/vaughn-palmer-horgan-focused-on-thwarting-gangs-not-playing-dirty-money-blame-game
It enraged me beyond my normal high level of dudgeon regarding BC politicians.
“There are a whole bunch of things that I would like answers to over the past 16 years,” the premier continued, referring to the B.C. Liberal term of office. “I get correspondence even to this day about the B.C. Rail sale from people who believe there are more rocks to be overturned in that regard.”
Yes Mr. Horgan, you do get that correspondence. What you fail to say is that you don’t answer that correspondence. I sent you correspondence last October that provided you with some of those overturned rocks. You didn’t even have to overturn them yourself. Your refusal to respond shows contempt for me as a citizen asking legitimate questions, and a shocking acceptance of lawbreaking by government. What’s wrong with you?
Palmer chimes in:
“The New Democrats for years vowed to conduct a public inquiry into the Liberal sale of the government-owned railway to CN, even setting aside $10 million for the exercise in the 2013 election platform.
The promise was quietly dropped last year and Horgan has no inclination to revive it. The sale was concluded 14 years ago and many of the major players have since exited the political arena.”
So who let it be “quietly dropped” Mr. Palmer? Would that be you and your peers in pro media? And since when does exiting the political arena absolve anyone of breaking the law? Why interview anyone at all if you aren’t looking for answers? Who trained you; Bill Good?
Mr. Eby helps out:
“The loss of some accountability, the loss of the ability to say this person violated this policy, this person violated that law.”
Wonderful. The Attorney General sacrifices holding lawbreakers accountable in the name of getting out a speedy report that holds no one accountable.
But don’t worry. He’s in a hurry to move on to the next piece, “because we can’t let organized crime get ahead of us.”
Those are taillights you’re looking at Mr. Eby. That means somebody is already ahead of you. And I think you know damn well who’s driving the car.
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You are so right Norm. The BC NDP were in the “cat bird seat” when the Enron fraud started. BC Hydro was booking huge revenue amounts from sales to “Others” . All managers that I have known conduct their business by paying particular attention to the “exceptions”, but in the case of this fraud the government and BC hydro board and management stood like deer in the headlights. The in-coming Liberals carried on the practice.
Morals and ethics thrown into the ditch.
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I think it is a very long shot that a federal government, with the same MOs, will rattle any chains.
Genie will stay put, unless there is a major public revolt, which is even less likely than the feds acting.
I hope the likes of Fred Pinnock keep talking. None of the players want to challenge him in court so, other than personal safety, he and we have nothing to lose from his determined courage and sense of what’s right. I would help if I could.
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Could another reason for the NDPs reluctance be that a public inquiry with subpoena powers might force the government to release cabinet documents like what happened in the BCTF bced case? Politicians of all stripes are scared to death the public will see what’s being said by their elected reps behind closed doors!
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