British Columbia’s finance minister says that province’s transparent land registry will push dirty money to real estate markets in other parts of Canada — and Toronto’s at risk.“If you’re a money launderer, provincial lines don’t matter,” Carole James told the Star in an interview Thursday. “Money launderers don’t look at borders, they look for opportunities.”“If one province puts something in place and the other provinces don’t ... it provides an opportunity,” she said.B.C. is in the process of implementing Canada’s most transparent land registry as part of a wide-ranging effort to tackle its housing affordability crisis. Across Canada, criminals have been able to buy property with dirty money by masking their identities behind numbered companies, and this has helped drive up real estate prices, especially in Vancouver and Toronto. B.C.’s new registry will compel numbered companies and trust funds that buy property to reveal their true owners in an effort to cut off the flow of illicit cash.Read more:Toronto real estate is vulnerable to money launderingReal estate investigation is next for author of B.C. casino money laundering reportHow the laundering of ‘dirty money’ in B.C. casinos was exposed“Transparency is a critical piece of closing loopholes that people use to money-launder, closing the opportunity to people who want to take advantage of not paying their taxes,” James said.“You shouldn’t have the ability to hide behind a numbered company, to hide the ownership of property in British Columbia.” In Vancouver, drug money has been finding its way into the property market. At the same time, it is nearly impossible to determine the extent of foreign ownership of houses and condos — and whether capital gains taxes are being paid — because it is impossible to determine their real owners. These factors contributed ...
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