While not convicted (charges were stayed), takes a certain amount of chutzpah to apply:
Caixuan “Summer” Qin and her now-deceased husband once stood accused by the Canadian government of running an underground bank that allegedly laundered hundreds of millions of dollars for transnational organised crime groups, catering to wealthy Chinese gamblers and international drug gangs.
But Qin and her husband Jian Jun Zhu, who was shot dead in a Vancouver restaurant in 2020, were never tried or convicted. Canadian prosecutors stayed money laundering and other related charges in November 2018 after the identity of an informant was mistakenly revealed in evidentiary disclosure to the couple’s defence lawyers.
Now, it’s Qin who is taking the Canadian government to court, fighting its demand for alleged unpaid taxes, and claiming that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) had wrongfully delayed processing her bid for Canadian citizenship.
Qin’s lawyer, Erin Roth, told the Post in an email that the application was a “request for processing”.
“Otherwise, I am saying ‘no comment’,” Roth said.
IRCC declined to make anyone available for an interview, but stated in an email that the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted processing times for citizenship applications.
It was in October 2015 when Qin and Zhu found themselves ensnared in one of Canada’s largest-ever money laundering investigations. The pair owned and operated Silver International Investments, an underground bank in Richmond, British Columbia that allegedly took in more than a million dollars a day from criminal drug gangs. The pair doled out cash to so-called whale gamblers on junkets as a means of skirting China’s strict capital controls, according to government lawsuit claims.
Silver International allegedly provided cash to gamble at a government-owned casino not far from the company’s offices, taking in criminal proceeds from transnational organised crime groups who needed drug cash washed clean and clandestinely moved to China or elsewhere, the lawsuit claims.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had been surveilling Qin and Silver’s premises for months before raiding the company’s offices in October 2015, where they seized more than C$2 million (almost US$1.6 million) in cash, casino chips, gift cards, and other property.
Known as Project E-Pirate, the investigation by the RCMP eventually saw Qin, Zhu, and Silver charged criminally for money laundering and other related offences in September 2017. But a little over a year later, Canadian federal prosecutors stayed the charges, initially without explanation to the chagrin of provincial politicians.
It was later revealed that the identity of an informant had been compromised by mistake, putting the informant’s life at risk had the case gone to trial.
But the victory for Qin and her husband was short-lived. In December 2018, about a month after the criminal case fell apart, British Columbia’s Director of Civil Forfeiture moved to seize the cash and property snapped up by police during their E-Pirate probe, while the Canada Revenue Agency began investigating the company and couple’s finances.
According to documents filed in the Tax Court of Canada, after completing a “net worth analysis” on Qin and an audit of Silver International, Canadian tax authorities found that “her lifestyle was far beyond what she could have afforded based on her reported income”.
Between 2011 and 2015, the Canadian government claimed she declared just over C$25,000 in income, while allegedly failing to report more than C$2.3 million in income and shareholder benefits from Silver International as a company director and shareholder over the same five-year period.
But Qin claims she “did not make a misrepresentation attributable to neglect, carelessness, wilful default or fraud” to justify the taxman’s “gross negligence” penalties and reassessments of her tax returns all these years later.
Meanwhile, Qin reached a deal with the BC government in November 2021 to forfeit more than a million dollars in cash, casino chips, and partial proceeds of a property sale.
Qin’s husband, though, didn’t live to see the deal through. Zhu was shot dead on September 18, 2020 at a Japanese restaurant in Richmond, Vancouver. His associate, Paul King Jin, was wounded in the shooting. Jin was another key player in the RCMP’s E-Pirate probe, said to be one of Silver International’s biggest clients.
In November 2021, police charged Richard Charles Reed, a 23-year-old Vancouver man, with the first-degree murder of Zhu.
Both the RCMP’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team and the BC Prosecution Service (BCPS) declined to comment about Reed, Zhu or Silver International.
Source: Chinese widow once ensnared in major Canada money laundering case seeks Canadian citizenship
Multicultural Meanderings 