Before moving from China to Canada in 2006, Runkai Chen told immigration officials that he made at most $41,000 a year. His wife, he said, was employed as a clerk.
He is the owner of a Tudor-style home with mountain and ocean views he purchased in 2016 for $15.6 million. It sits a few doors down from another mansion his daughter bought in 2012 for about $14 million when she was 25. She did so without a mortgage and while listing her occupation as “student.” And while Chen declared a low salary upon arrival to Canada in 2006, a “big development occurred after that,” which lifted his income, Waldman said.
The federal government has been quietly analyzing the source of Chen’s wealth through documents dating back to before he arrived in Canada in 2006, according to documents obtained by the Cullen Commission that include a report from the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada — Canada’s financial intelligence unit.
From 2009 to 2016, tens of millions of dollars of Chen’s wealth flowed into big Canadian banks through offshore shell companies in tax havens and an alleged underground banking network of Hong Kong currency exchanges, according to the Cullen Commission case study. “During the course of the initial investigations into Gu, unidentified senior military officials allegedly tipped off Chen, who fled to Canada,” the letter said. “President Xi Jinping then ordered the issue of an arrest warrant, but to this day he has eluded authorities.”
Chinese court and company registration documents, a construction and planning permit as well as media accounts, appear to show that Chen bought and sold properties at the site of a former military airport in Shanghai that was part of a development project overseen by Gu. But Waldman denied China’s allegations that Chen paid bribes to Gu to acquire the land.
Canada Border Services Agency said it was unable to comment on Chen’s case specifically, but said it sometimes receives information from “foreign government enforcement agencies” about individuals seeking citizenship, and would then seek to “confirm its validity.”foreign money in Canada’s real estate market reach well beyond the Chen case.
The real estate sector, in particular, is “vulnerable to exploitation by criminals looking to launder illicit ,” the federal government submission reads, by providing a secure, legitimate investment and a location to live and conduct “further criminal business.” “There’s definitely money laundering going on in GTA real estate,” said Cohen. “We haven’t seen quite the revelations yet as in B.C., but there’s enough red flags.”family’s financial flows first emerged in 2010, according to an anonymized report from FINTRAC. The document is contained in a “Money Laundering Case Study” by the Cullen Commission. It refers to Chen as Person A.
Between Jan. 26 and 29, 2010, Chen and his family deposited $15.1 million from four different companies in Hong Kong and China, the FINTRAC report details. When the bank turned to her son for more information, Chen “was unwilling to provide any satisfactory documentation confirming legal title over the land in or in relation to any land sale transactions.”But the family had little trouble finding other Canadian banks to accept ongoing flows of tens of millions of dollars as late as 2016.
The general had allegedly amassed properties and possessions that far outstripped his military salary, according to media reports. Chinese police reportedly spent two days at one of Gu’s homes, loading four trucks with luxury items, including a solid gold statue of the revolutionary communist leader Mao Zedong.
His daughter’s Canadian citizenship application is also in limbo, hanging on the verdict of her father’s case, according to a federal court judgment. Those tactics, as well as a Chinese legal system that routinely relies on torture to obtain evidence, put the Canadian government in a tricky position, said Pils, the King’s College professor.
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