Finance minister Jim Flaherty today tabled in Parliament the 2006-07 Annual Report of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC). The report highlights that the number of case disclosures FINTRAC issued this year rose by 15% to 193.

FINTRAC disclosures contain financial intelligence the Centre suspects would be relevant to investigations of money laundering, terrorist activity financing or other threats to the security of Canada.

“FINTRAC has made great advances in making Canada a hostile environment for money laundering, the financing of terror and major crime,” said Flaherty, in a news release. “The recent amendments brought by Bill C-25 have strengthened Canada’s laws and expanded the information that FINTRAC can provide to investigations.”

FINTRAC says its 2007 results reflect its strategy of targeting larger and more complex networks engaged in money laundering or terrorist financing activity. This year it has disclosed a significant number of large cases, that is, with disclosed transactions valued at more than $50 million. The total value of disclosed transactions suspected of being relevant to an investigation or prosecution of money laundering offences reached $10 billion.

“Such large dollar values suggest very large international criminal operations and that the criminal networks behind such operations are increasingly vulnerable to FINTRAC’s ability to detect them,” said FINTRAC Director Horst Intscher.

Included in the 193 case disclosures, were 33 cases disclosed to CSIS or the RCMP suspected to be relevant to investigations of terrorist activity financing or threats to the security of Canada, as defined in the CSIS Act. These case disclosures involved $209 million in transactions, down from $256 million last year.