Canada moved this week to ban cryptocurrency ATMs as lawmakers advanced a bill creating a new Financial Crimes Agency, a sweeping shift aimed at harder action on money laundering and fraud. The legislation completed its first reading in parliament and was introduced by the governing Liberals.
The move lands in a country with nearly 4,000 cryptocurrency ATMs, more than any other on a per-capita basis in the world, and officials say the machines have become a tool for scammers and criminals. They say victims are being pushed to use the devices in fraud schemes, while criminals use them to launder the proceeds of crime.
The changes matter because Canada’s existing financial-crime system has been built around Fintrac, which has served as the country’s financial intelligence unit for more than a quarter of a century but does not track down and arrest suspects. Last year, Fintrac uncovered $45bn in transactions linked to money laundering, counterterrorist financing, sanctions and evasion disclosures, but its role has been to hand investigations off to police and prosecutors rather than run them itself.
The new agency would change that. The Financial Crimes Agency would investigate and prosecute financial crimes, and the legislation would reduce the scope and mandate of Fintrac and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Jessica Davis, a financial-crime expert, said the creation of a new enforcement agency was a meaningful investment and a sign that authorities may finally be treating the problem with the seriousness it demands. She said the scale is still murky, adding that the figure could be too high or far too low because Canada does not fully know the scope of financial crime in the country.
The push also reflects a wider alarm over the size of the illicit economy. A 2024 report estimated that more than US$3tn in illicit funds moved through the global financial system in the previous year, underscoring why governments are under pressure to act more aggressively. Canada’s move stands in contrast with the current US administration’s approach to financial crime, coming after Donald Trump’s government issued a high-profile pardon of Changpeng Zhao following his guilty plea to money laundering charges and after Binance was ordered to pay a record $4.3bn penalty for its role in facilitating terrorist financing.
Davis said the problem has long outpaced the tools devoted to it, arguing that the RCMP has been unable and unwilling to sustain financial-crime investigations and that the missing ingredients have included funding, skills, resources and political will. She said such cases are long and complex, but expressed hope that sustained resources will now follow the legislation. For Canada, the question is no longer whether financial crime is a serious threat. It is whether the government will keep up long enough to make the new agency matter.
