Caixuan Qin, Chinese widow once ensnared in major Canada money laundering case, seeks Canadian citizenship
- Vancouver woman Caixuan Qin takes Canada government to court over a perceived delay in her Canadian citizenship application, tax demands
- Qin and husband Jian Jun Zhu, who was shot dead in 2020, were subjects of a Canada criminal case, accused of laundering money through an underground bank
Caixuan “Summer” Qin and her now-deceased husband once stood accused by the Canadian government of running an underground bank that allegedly laundered hundreds of millions of dollars for transnational organised crime groups, catering to wealthy Chinese gamblers and international drug gangs.
But Qin and her husband Jian Jun Zhu, who was shot dead in a Vancouver restaurant in 2020, were never tried or convicted. Canadian prosecutors stayed money laundering and other related charges in November 2018 after the identity of an informant was mistakenly revealed in evidentiary disclosure to the couple’s defence lawyers.
Now, it’s Qin who is taking the Canadian government to court, fighting its demand for alleged unpaid taxes, and claiming that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) had wrongfully delayed processing her bid for Canadian citizenship.
According to documents filed in the Federal Court of Canada obtained by South China Morning Post, Qin claims she applied for Canadian citizenship in July 2019. Since then, she claims there’s been an “ongoing failure, refusal or unreasonable delay by an Officer of the Immigration, Refugees & Citizenship Canada to make a decision”.
Normally, such decisions are rendered in 12 months. But Qin’s application has languished for more than 29 months, “over 2.5 times longer than the process requires,” she claims.
Qin’s lawyer, Erin Roth, told the Post in an email that the application was a “request for processing”.
