Loto-Québec spent $260,000 in legal fees to contest a fine received because it had not declared the suspicious transactions of one of its customers at the Casino de Montréal.
• Read also: The Casino hid information from the federal government
• Read also: Loto-Québec refuses an interview on organized crime
• Read also: The red carpet for organized crime at the Casino
It took a year and a half for the Crown corporation to lift the veil on legal fees following an access request from our Office of Investigation made in November 2020.
The request was made after the announcement of a hefty $147,000 fine imposed by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center of Canada (FINTRAC), Canada’s money laundering watchdog.
The Casino is the only gambling establishment in the country to have been fined by the federal body in the last three years.
The story began in 2011 when FINTRAC conducted an assessment of the Casino’s activities. Between July 28 and August 31, she detected a series of questionable transactions made by a client.
The latter would have been the subject of an investigation by the RCMP and at least one newspaper article at the same time, according to judgments of the Federal Court of Appeal.
In addition, the Casino reportedly failed to report certain transactions over $10,000 as required by law.
Loto-Québec refused to pay FINTRAC’s original fine and contested it for nearly six years.
Offender #10
However, even if the dispute between Loto-Québec, which oversees the casinos, and the federal authorities lasted for years, most of it took place behind closed doors.
In all legal proceedings, we are not talking about Loto-Québec, but about offender no. 10 to protect the identity of the Crown corporation.
Fortunately, for the past few years, FINTRAC has made public the names of organizations that receive large fines. However, no details are given about the client at fault or the amounts he is suspected of having laundered at the casino.
The amount of the initial fine imposed on the Casino in 2014 is also unknown since it is redacted in the documents of the Federal Court of Appeals which required that the amount be reassessed in 2017.
Not a first
This is not the first time that the Casino has been singled out. In 2020, our Bureau of Investigation revealed that leaders of the Montreal mafia, Stefano Sollecito, Leonardo Rizzuto and Francesco Del Balso had all frequented the gambling den on Île Notre-Dame.
Stefano Sollecito even had a privilege card in 2015 that entitled him to hotel nights, restaurant dinners or free show tickets.
Since then, Quebec has tightened the rules and important members of organized crime are no longer tolerated at the Casino.
– With the collaboration of Andrea Valeria
