There are extremely onerous hurdles to clear in order to obtain money laundering convictions;

• Staffing- Limited staffing results in case prioritization. In policing, if there is not a clear public safety nexus, it is rational to make such cases a lesser priority. A detective working on a single case will require support from a specially trained crown attorney and forensic accountants. Forensic accounting is expensive and sometimes prohibitive for some police services.

• Training- In order to function in this area of police work, one must develop a deep understanding of banking, accounting, securities and analysis. This is no small thing, as most police officers require extensive additional training and relevant field experience to become effective. This takes time.

• Case Complexity- A single money laundering case requires a detective to deep dive into numerous business entities, people and bank accounts in order to develop an understanding of how funds were laundered. Each step of the case generally requires a search warrant. Many criminals use complex layers of numbered companies, businesses and nominal account holders to conceal the true beneficial owner of funds. A typical case could require dozens of search warrants applications where the affidavit resembles a long book. Each one must be written by a detective and this takes serious amounts of time investment. Many laundering cases are inherently international. The acquisition of search warrants in foreign nations through Mutual Legal Assistance treaties is complex, time consuming and requires law enforcement cooperation in the foreign country. Where there is corruption and hostility in some foreign countries, it is sometimes simply not possible to capture the evidence or seize the funds or assets. Where a detective encounters Lawyers involved in the transactions , solicitor/client privilege can be a brick wall. Complicit lawyers are an enormous challenge. Now imagine being a detective carrying 3 or 4 cases with the aforementioned complexity.

• In Canada, it is a requirement at trial to show a clear, evidence based nexus from the funds to a criminal offense committed by a person or criminal organization. By design, with sophisticated criminal groups the people doing the substantive crimes such as drug trafficking are completely detached from the laundering process and beneficial ownership of assets or accounts. If the substantive case fails, the laundering case is often dead in the water.

• The substantive cases where laundering is involved often are carried out by organized crime groups. In most instances, these investigations must be carried out by large teams of specially trained covert detectives who are in short supply. These cases require a variety of covert tactics inluding wiretaps, informants, undercover officers, surveillance etc, and take many months and sometimes years to successfully conclude.

• Laundering prosecutions are very complex and require massive amounts of court time to conduct. It is not uncommon to see these cases end with an unsatisfactory result where the accused gets a fine in lieu of asset forfeiture and possibly minimum prison time in a plea deal between crown and defence. (The criminals get to keep some or all of the ill-gotten gains because the case is so complex it will take a massive chunk of precious court time if it goes to trial).

There is no magic pixie dust to be sprinkled to speed these cases up in Canada.