Lawyer who moved millions for alleged B.C. money launderer gets 6-month suspension

Canadian $50 bills are seen in this file photo.

A Vancouver lawyer who facilitated millions of dollars worth of real estate and other transactions on the instructions of an accused money launderer has agreed to a six-month suspension from practising.

Timothy Chi-Kwan Wan admitted to a variety of professional misconduct in a consent agreement with the Law Society of B.C., which was approved on April 10 and was published online last week.

The document contains 13 admissions of professional misconduct, most of them related to financial transactions that occurred under “objectively suspicious circumstances” in which Wan failed to make “reasonable inquiries” of his clients.

He also admitted to swearing a false or misleading affidavit and failing to co-operate with the law society’s investigation. The consent agreement indicates he provided false, misleading or incomplete statements to investigators on 10 separate occasions, withheld relevant evidence and provided or attempted to provide fabricated evidence on three occasions.

The transactions that led to the investigation occurred between 2018 and 2023, and all of them involved a man referred to in the document as AA.

When Wan met AA in October 2018, the man had already been the subject of “media reports linking him to organized crime and money laundering,” according to the consent agreement.

AA was also the subject of “investigations by the police and the Canada Revenue Agency that were a matter of public record,” and AA himself sent Wan a news article via WeChat that detailed “a major police investigation” into AA, the document adds.

AA denied any wrongdoing, and Wan took him at his word.

“Despite the article raising red flags for the lawyer, he took no further steps in relation to the allegations in the article, including making any further inquiries, because AA had not ‘actually been charged with a crime,’” the consent agreement reads.

Wan responded similarly when AA sent him a copy of a civil forfeiture notice of civil claim in May 2019. The claim contained “allegations of money laundering, illegal gaming, and other unlawful activity against AA and others,” according to the document.

“The extent of the lawyer’s inquiries concerning the (civil forfeiture) claim was to ask AA about the matters and accept AA’s response that he had done nothing wrong,” the agreement reads.

Between October 2018 and May 2019, Wan assisted AA with five matters involving “prospective or finalized loans or mortgages totaling approximately $11 million,” according to the document.

AA was not named in any of the files, but he provided direction on all of them.

Four of the five files involved another person, identified as BB, who Wan later helped incorporate two companies for the purposes of purchasing two pieces of real estate valued at a combined $2.4 million.

Wan also helped BB sell her family home in Richmond, despite searches for information about her yielding “references to BB’s father as an alleged ‘gangster’ and ‘kingpin’ of a Chinese crime cartel,” according to the consent agreement.

“The lawyer made no inquiries about the source of funds used for BB and (her husband’s) original purchase of the subject property in 2017,” the document reads.

In all, Wan allowed nearly $8 million to pass through his trust account in relation to the files, according to the document.

Wan admitted that he had behaved in a way that he knew or ought to have known “assisted or encouraged dishonesty, crime or fraud,” and agreed to a six-month suspension, which the law society noted aligns with the discipline handed out in other cases with similar circumstances.

In accepting the consent agreement proposal, the regulator noted several mitigating factors, including Wan’s admission and remorse, his lack of a prior professional conduct record and the fact that he was “a very junior lawyer at the time of the misconduct.”

“Since the misconduct, the lawyer has made efforts to educate himself by completing several relevant professional education courses, including courses concerning anti-money-laundering measures, client identification and verification, and trust accounting,” the document reads.

It also notes that there were delays in the law society’s investigation of the matter that were not caused by Wan.

The lawyer’s suspension will begin May 1, according to a news release from the law society.