In a row of small Yonge Street storefronts, Million Exchange angles for a corner of a booming market.
“Instant buying and selling of digital currencies,” it promises on its website, though the shop is not in the federal registry of authorized crypto businesses. Registration is a requirement meant to deter money laundering and terrorist financing.
Over the last year and a half, more than $200 million worth of digital currencies has moved through a virtual wallet used by Million Exchange.
OTTAWA — Canada’s “open and accessible” financial sector is vulnerable to terror groups looking to finance their overseas operations, a new government report details.
The report, entitled 2025 Assessment of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Risks in Canada, was quietly released by the Department of Finance last week, indicating overseas terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah involved in Politically Motivated Violent Extremism (PVME) are actively raising funds in Canada.
WASHINGTON — A former top U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration official has come forward with explosive allegations that Canadian authorities obstructed a high-level DEA investigation into a 42-kilogram carfentanil seizure tied to a 2018 mass shooting in Toronto and, according to senior U.S. investigators, potentially linked to Pakistani threat networks and Chinese chemical precursor suppliers.
The DEA learned, after 29-year-old Faisal Hussain’s shooting rampage on Danforth Avenue—which left two people dead and thirteen more wounded—that his brother and a network with Pakistani links were connected to a historic seizure of carfentanil, a synthetic opioid 100 times more potent than fentanyl, in September 2017. The drugs were discovered in a suburban Pickering home, alongside specialized equipment consistent with a transnational trafficking operation.
When asked if Canada is becoming a safe haven for terrorists, David Harris, former Chief of Strategic Planning of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) stated, “I think there is a dire risk of this happening. We are already playing a significant role in international terror funding. We have 50 terrorist organizations of a variety of descriptions and a good number of them are the so-called world class ones.” While addressing a Special Committee of the Senate, former director of CSIS Ward Elcock stated, “I’ll be as blunt as I can be, we cannot become, through inaction or otherwise, what might be called an official state sponsor of terrorism.”
OTTAWA – An Ontario Superior Court judge has dismissed a major Muslim charity’s bid to halt a Canada Revenue Agency audit, saying it is too early to intervene in the federal examination.
In his ruling, Justice Markus Koehnen said while he is sympathetic to many of the Muslim Association of Canada’s arguments, a court should not involve itself in a government body’s process while it is still playing out.
Transactions related to the financing of international terrorist groups consisted mainly of funds transfers to countries of concern for such activity including Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
… Within the analyzed disclosures, the most frequently identified international terrorist group was Daesh, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, followed by Hezbollah, the alert says.
“A large portion of the funds suspected of supporting Daesh were sent to Turkey, often to regions or towns close to the Turkey-Syria border, a particular high-risk region for terrorist activity financing.”
Funds suspected of bankrolling Hezbollah were frequently sent or received by people or organizations referring to the sale of cars or listed in the automotive industry.
In typical lets not offend the offensive style the agency does not breakdown its disclosures by terrorist type: “Using the information gleaned from Canadian businesses, the centre made 355 disclosures in 2021-22 to Canada’s law enforcement and national security agencies in support of investigations related to terrorist activity financing.”
Justin Trudeau, Canada’s charismatic young Prime Minister, seeks to cultivate a progressive image. The Wall Street Journal calls him “the world’s golden boy of liberal politics,” while lamenting that a corruption scandal tarnished his “rock-star popularity.” Much of his progressive façade, however, rests on an embrace of identity politics. And, as often happens when ethnic lobbies trump individuals, radicalism wins while the silent majority loses out.
Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed compared the funds raised for the Truckers for Freedom Convoy to “terrorist financing” on Friday.
Noormohamed made the comment while answering questions about forcing fundraising platform GoFundMe to testify before a parliamentary committee.
The Biden administration had effectively agreed to provide a massive infusion of cash to the Taliban. But the final deal fell through, the Afghan government fled, and the Taliban took Kabul.
The bulk shipment of dollars never did arrive.
