Here's an interesting one. Today's Vancouver Province claims "Money laundering experts say there is no way for Canadians to know how much dirty money is being laundered in Vancouver real estate through Canadian lawyers. As a Province investigation revealed Monday, Canada’s financial intelligence unit Fintrac has ramped up an audit of Vancouver’s booming property market because of concerns that realtors may be turning a blind eye to money laundering."
We're going to have to start an online pool. How long do you think it will take Christie Clark to disband Canada’s financial intelligence unit? Historically, every time a police task force found organized crime, a government body disbanded that police task force. They claim "Canada's dirty money detection system broken all the way through." So instead of fixing the broken system what do you think the odd are that they';ll just get rid of the task force that came up with the report? Judging from their past history, I'd say it's guaranteed. So let's have a pool to see who can guess how long it will take.
I'm going to guess it will be coincidentally close to the the amount of time from when the Ports Police submitted the report on Organized Crime on the docks to when they were disbanded. Of course that will just be coincidence......
ReplyDelete"Broken all the way through", huh. Of course it is, how else could the "Hall's Angles" and other drug traffickers launder hundreds of millions of dollars in drug profits in the last 20 years? This is not news.
BC is open for business!!
A home sale in Vancouver potentially involves millions of dollars, with everyone getting a slice of the pie, from realtors to home inspectors. Everyone involved is loath to do anything that will cancel the deal. The one thing the article failed to connect is the amount of property with absentee owners in Vancouver. Who can afford to let a million dollar home sit for 3 years with no owners in site: someone who does not give crap about ownership, only laundering. Good luck sopping this gravy train from stopping. The only thing I would like answered is what are the long term implications of this offshore ownership.
ReplyDeleteTrailrunners assessment of the time lines are good.
ReplyDeleteUnlike England which has started to investigate "dirty" money being laundered through their London realestate markets, B.C./Canada will do nothing. They don't get the long term game. They only see today and tomorrow and their pockets. In the end we may well wind up looking more like Moscow than London. We know how much Putin and his friends are worth today. Not bad for a former civil servant in Russian.