MoneyLaundering posts

Many cities in Canada have placed their bets on casinos to help drive economic activity and stimulate development. With the economy continuing to sputter along, many places are looking to felt covered tables and one-armed bandits as saviours. Once thought of as 'Toronto The Good', Ontario's capital is the latest municipality thinking of going Vegas, but is the glitz and glamour all it's made out to be? Let's take a look at how a casino can help or hinder a city.

Tax Revenue
Gambling in Canada is big business. Last year, all legalized gambling contributed $13.7 billion in net revenue to governments. Casinos contributed 34% of that total. While this certainly sounds great, some research shows that governments that build casinos don't always spread their new wealth as expected. Instead of building roads and schools, for example, there is evidence that governments use gambling revenue on other priorities like debt reduction, which don't have the same immediate impacts on the people living in the shadow of the casino.

For a lot of people money laundering is more the stuff of movies than real life. If you're brilliant and looking for a career path though, there may be a demand for your skills if you have an aptitude for forensic accounting coupled with an interest in criminal law, for example.

Money laundering is a relatively new problem emerging around the world. According to Statistics Canada and the RCMP, somewhere between $5 and $15 billion is "laundered" in Canada each year. Worldwide, they say this figure could be as high as US$500 to US$1-trillion.

Related posts:
Celebrity Tax Cheats
Audits of 'Gifting Tax Shelters' Ensnare 170,000 Canadians

Money laundering is the process of using, transferring, disposing of and changing money so authorities cannot connect the proceeds to their origins – usually laundered assets come from drug trafficking, prostitution, smuggling, arms sales, migrant smuggling and white-collar crime (securities offences as well as real estate, credit card and telemarketing fraud).