Canadian 'banking' company linked to sanctioned money

Canadian 'banking' company linked to sanctioned money-laundering network

Visual investigation reveals 'red flags' experts say should prompt review of secretive firm

Maple Digital Financial Solutions describes itself as a "revolutionary banking" company, with an address in a skyscraper in the heart of Vancouver's financial district.

On paper, the company is registered with Canada’s financial intelligence agency, and offers "fast and easy" global currency transfers and "convenient banking" with the click of a button.

In practice, however, it’s a shell company. Its website offers no option to open an account and provides no employee names, while phone calls go straight to voicemail and emails go unanswered.

A CBC News visual investigation, in collaboration with the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), reveals this shell company is closely linked to the TGR network, accused by international law enforcement of laundering billions of dollars for ransomware gangs, drug cartels and wealthy Russians.

"Red lights are flashing, there are a number of red flags here," said Denis Meunier, former deputy director at the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), who reviewed the findings.

A report by CIR, a U.K.-based research organization, used digital clues to connect Maple Digital Financial Solutions with a series of companies called The OneGate and the TGR network.

CBC shared its findings with multiple legal and financial experts, and each had a similar takeaway: Maple Digital Financial Solutions, also known as Maple Finance, is at "high risk" for suspicious activity.

Unlike traditional banks, money services businesses (MSB) such as Maple Finance already pose a threat of laundering illicit funds due to a lack of transparency and the fact that they don’t require an operating licence in many provinces.

This, coupled with ties to a sanctioned network and individuals known for money laundering, should put authorities in Canada on alert, said Meunier.

TGR network: transnational money-laundering

The CIR report and the experts CBC News spoke to acknowledge there's no definitive proof of money laundering. But there are substantial digital clues that connect Maple to TGR — primarily Andrejs Carenoks, a Latvian sanctioned by the U.S. in 2024 for his role in a sophisticated money-laundering operation allegedly led by Yury Maksakov, a Ukrainian national born in Russia.

Carenoks, according to corporate records, was a director at Maple Finance in 2021.

The current director is Janis Zvigulis. He is also director of The OneGate and a registered director of TGR Wealth Solutions in the U.K., which was sanctioned in 2024.

Zvigulis has not been sanctioned.

Authorities in the U.S. and U.K. described TGR as a full-service shadow financial hub, offering unregistered crypto exchanges, prepaid credit cards and sanctions evasion services, helping cybercriminals and drug traffickers.

For example, if a Russian cybercrime group held $1 million US in cryptocurrency paid by the victim of a ransomware attack and a drug gang in the U.K. had a similar amount in cash that needed to be laundered, TGR would arrange for the U.K. drug gang to be paid in crypto in exchange for their cash. The cash would then be laundered through a network of international business accounts.

Investigators at the U.K.’s National Crime Agency (NCA) have seen similar exchanges where cash handovers were followed almost immediately by the movement of a similar denomination of crypto.

Both Carenoks and Maksakov are accused of playing major roles in the TGR network, according to authorities in the U.K. and U.S.

"TGR is massive. It's really, really huge," said Elise Thomas, senior open-source investigator at CIR and author of the OneGate report. "To have Carenoks’s name on the actual company documents [for Maple Digital Financial Solutions], I think it's some really strong connections to TGR."

CBC tried reaching out to Maple Finance and The OneGate through email and phone but did not receive a response.

The registered Vancouver address on the Maple Finance website led to Canadian business law firm Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.

In a call, Osler lawyer and partner Matthew Burgoyne said, "the Law Society code of conduct doesn't let us disclose who our clients are and who they're not. So, unfortunately, I wouldn't even be able to tell you if we acted for them or not."

CBC followed up via email requesting that the lawyer ask Maple Finance for comment on this story. The firm wrote in an email, "we cannot help with your story."

"I think it sort of underscores that this is not a normal business. Because normally, when you call the business, they answer," said Thomas. "And when you try to contact them through the channels that they've given to be contacted by customers, they would respond."

CBC News reached out to Careneks, Zvigulis and Maksakov but did not receive a response.

Attempts were also made to reach former directors of Maple Digital Financial Solutions.

One of those former directors, Elen Kazarian, is based in Ontario. In an email, she told CBC News she was appointed as a "silent director" because the “owner and CEO of this company are foreigners I was told by my cousin — who knew these owners to help them to register this Corporation."

She said she didn’t do anything during her tenure as a director and wasn't paid.

Maple Digital Financial Solutions is part of a group of companies connected to The OneGate.

The financial network offers products such as virtual and physical payment cards, and services such as cryptocurrency trading through shell companies spread across at least seven jurisdictions, from the U.S. to Switzerland to Hong Kong.

"OneGate seems to be presenting [itself as a] payments service company that provides a number of different financial products and services," Thomas said. "Under the hood, there are all these deep historical connections to TGR, which obviously is accused of being a transnational money-laundering ring."

The TGR network was disrupted in 2024 after a three-year international probe led by the NCA codenamed Operation Destabilise. It was a global effort to dismantle a multibillion-dollar shadow banking and cryptocurrency network that laundered proceeds for violent drug cartels, ransomware gangs and Russian intelligence operations.

It resulted in 128 arrests worldwide and the seizure of more than $44 million Cdn in cash and digital assets.

The OneGate network was operating in parallel to TGR and started with a virtual office in Vancouver when Maple Finance was still called Fexcool Payments.

The CIR report further detailed the digital forensic connections. When it changed its name to Maple Digital Financial Solutions, it registered a website: maplefinance.ca.

Andrejs Carenoks was the one who registered that domain.

At the same time, Carenoks was the director of a TGR entity later sanctioned by the U.S.

The overlap between Maple Finance and TGR went beyond Carenoks. Archived records of that website show that Maple Finance listed a Toronto-area phone number also used by TGR Partners.

Maple Finance provided clients with a branded payment card issued by OneCard — a service in part operated by TGR at the time.

In 2023, Maple Finance became the acting primary legal entity behind The OneGate. Its customer portal was fully merged into the main OneGate domain a short time after.

TGR Partners also actively recruited staff for Maple Finance online, including posting job listings for an IT project manager to work out of TGR's physical office in Podgorica, Montenegro, under a TGR human resources manager.

PDF files created for Maple’s privacy agreements contained metadata listing the author as "Max Travel," a likely digital trace left by TGR leader Yury Maksakov, who uses the username "Max Traveller" on Facebook.

The digital clues and overlaps between Maple Finance and TGR are consistent with "illicit financial activities," said Peter Dent, a former forensic services lead for global professional services firm Deloitte who is also part of the Vancouver Anti-Corruption Institute.

"I'm certainly concerned," said Dent. "They share a common directorship, they share a phone number with another entity that has been alleged to be involved in illicit financial activity. They don't even have a phone number in Canada."

Following the global crackdown on the TGR Network in December 2024, Maple Finance was scrubbed from the active provider list on The OneGate website, as its FINTRAC registration expired.

The FINTRAC registration has since been renewed and Maple Finance now advertises itself as an "innovative financial ecosystem for modern business owners to manage their finances on their own terms."

FINTRAC wrote in an email to CBC News that it is "prohibited from disclosing information on the compliance history of individual entities... except in the case of a public notice of an administrative monetary penalty imposed."

"If I was the government authority in charge of money-laundering enforcement, like FINTRAC here in Canada, I think I'd be looking at this report," said William Pellerin, international trade lawyer at McMillan LLP, who also reviewed the report and CBC’s findings.

"You have known actors that have been under investigation in other jurisdictions … in conjunction with everything else, maybe this is something we ought to dig into."

Do you have any tips on this story? Email at VI@cbc.ca