Not surprising at all. Canada had "money for citizenship scheme" and these are the side effects. Québec has and is still playing a major role in this scheme with their provincial scheme called QIIP. Once the rich "investor" gets a permanent residence through QIIP, they move to BC for the better climate. Some QIIP PR holders has never even set foot in Québec according to the immigration dept of Québec . Condos in downtown Montreal are paid for in cash by foreign students who drive expensive cars.
I thought to myself, "that can't be right". And no, it seems like it's actually crazier[1], but see caveats[2]. You need $1.3M (USD) in minimum net worth:
> In order to be admitted into the Quebec Investor Program 2018, foreign investors must have a legally obtained minimum net worth of CAD $1.6 million (or its equivalent in a foreign currency), either individually or combined with their spouse or partner. Assets that may be included when calculating net worth include real estate, bank accounts, stocks and bonds, as well as pension funds. Under the Quebec program for investors, inherited assets are classified as legally obtained, however, donation or inheritance money must have been received at least six months prior to launching a QIIP application. As of January 2018, $1.6 million Canadian dollars is equivalent to approximately USD 1.3 million,
So, wait, what about the loan then? You only need $800k CAD (~$600k USD):
> Applicants for Canada investor immigration must sign an agreement stating their intention to make a government guaranteed CAD $800,000 investment in Quebec through a financial intermediary authorized to participate in the QIIP. This prescribed investment in a five-year term note is fully and unconditionally guaranteed by the Government of Quebec, and in accordance with the provisions of the program, the money is returned in full after five years with 0% interest.
But wait, maybe you don't want to have to sell all your assets to make that loan to Canada? What if someone else with money to spare could give Canada the money on your behalf? I mean, it's clear you can pay, right (since you're a millionaire), and the loan is guaranteed by the Canadian government. The only thing that would be missing is the interest one would make on the loan normally, so, what if…
> Over the last decade, a significant percentage of the Quebec and Canada Immigrant Investor Program participants have financed their investment in the country. Investors who do not wish to liquidate assets in order to come up with the required C$800,000 can finance the investment through an authorized Canadian financial intermediary for a one-time loan payment of ~$220,000 CAD, which includes all interest and fees. This means that as of January 2018, the "true cost" of obtaining a Canada investor visa is only around 175,000 American dollars,
Now, there are a few more gotchas (you have to intend to settle in Quebec, you must "have acquired at least two years of full-time business management experience in the past five years", …).
[2]: http://www.immigration-quebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/immigrate-settle... seems like a more official site. They list the number as $2M CAD ($1.5M USD) in net worth and $1.2M CAD investment (~$900k USD). But it does seem to confirm "financing". So, the theory seems sound, but there's perhaps some haggling over price. /s … sorta.
According to the Canadian charter of mobility rights, once you are granted a permanent residency, you can live in any province of your choice. So this intend to settle in Québec doesn't hold. That's why many of them have never even set foot in Québec though they had to sign an agreement to settle in Québec.
Are there any additional benefits beyond residency that the QIIP grants, that could be reneged upon if you violate the intent of the contract?
Perhaps, could they say that if you stay in Quebec, your money is just a loan, but if you don’t, it’s a permanent payment—making the entry fee almost more of a “deposit” attached to a Letter of Intent?
Why are you shocked? Is it too high or too low in your estimation?
The US has a similar program (EB5). The investor invests $500k over some period of time and gets back the money. In practice they spend $50k-$100k on a green card plus the opportunity cost of the $500k.
the EB5 investment isn't backed by the government though, so a lot riskier than the loan for Quebec investor visa. Additionally, as the parent comment mentioned, one could finance the investment and therefore really only pay ~175k out of pocket.
Yes, it's not easy to say goodbye to 1.2 million for 5 years. The outrage over it seems racially motivated to me. It's not like white millionaires haven't bought their way into the country before this.
Check out this article on Malta doing a pay-for-EU citizenship scheme:
"Critics charge that the program undermines the concept of European citizenship, potentially poses security risks and provides a possible backdoor for Russians seeking to escape sanctions against their own country."
From personal observation: Benefits are tangible and immediate to the city and its politicians from increased taxes and whatever bribes are paid, downsides are intangible and long-term to the city residents who get priced out of their homes, lose business because these "residents" don't actually live in the city, and have to live with sometimes-unpleasant citizenship tourists that are often involved in fraud of one sort or another.
Had a friend who did this and then moved to BC. My friend lived in Quebec for most of his childhood but left during teenage years. Not sure about this stereotype about "rich foreign students driving expensive cars", because I think that is only some and not all, but people only notice the few people with rich cars. It's a free world, who cares about rich students buying expensive cars.
What I think people don't understand is that only the rich and intelligent come in through this way. You need at least $1M in the bank to even be considered.
It doesn't. No intelligence or English/French language tests needed for QIIP.
Canada (except Québec) has a merit based immigration system called Express Entry for skilled individuals.
Québec's called Québec skilled worker programme. Despite its name, Quebec's system is not based on merit but first come first serve, paper based, slow (4+ years) and unpredictable.
Some more relevant stories about this issue "Dirty money driving up B.C. home prices as more than $40-billion laundered across Canada in 2018" and "Buying sprees, obscured ownership: Report reveals red flags of money laundering in B.C.'s property market" as well an editorial "Canada needs to stop being dirty money’s 24-hour laundromat" were published in today's Globe and Mail [0][1][2].
I'm of the opinion that money remaining fungible is of more importance to modern economies than preventing money laundering.
If crimes are performed to obtain such money, then the crimes are abhorrent no doubt. However the sending and receipt of said money afterwards, in-and-of-itself should not be a crime.
I believe it is not money laundering that is causing asset bubbles in specific jurisdictions, but the enforcement of anti-money laundering measures worldwide that is causing such illicit capital to concentrate to jurisdictions where avenues to launder them is accessible.
If the proceeds of crime can be spent in the jurisdictions where the crime took place, illicit capital will not cause asset bubbles.
That's a strange argument to make. These money-laundering fueled asset bubbles are caused because money-laundering is illegal? So if we make money laundering legal, then the dirty money will be spread out across all economies rather than concentrated where oversight is weakest?
The whole point of money laundering laws is that you make it difficult for criminals to use the profits from crime. If you remove that barrier, you've instantly made it far more lucrative to commit the underlying crimes. Secondly, tracking the money is how a lot of organized crime is uncovered in the first place. Removing financial controls would make it far more difficult to catch corruption, fraud, terrorism, human-trafficking, etc. committed by international criminal organizations.
It may be a game of whack-a-mole trying to prevent loopholes where criminals can launder their ill-gotten gains. But to do nothing would be far worse.
I doubt money laundering related charges themselves are the sole reason criminals are hesitant to spend their proceeds out in the open. Doing so would still lead to suspicion and possible investigations for the underlying criminal activity. Therefore, making money laundering related activity legal probably isn't going to accomplish what you want, and after seeing the decades of crime paying off for Paul Manafort, I'm of the opinion that we are in dire need of a serious crackdown on white collar crime, not a relaxation.
To me it makes more sense to destroy said money, which in effect creates a slight deflation and makes everyone richer. Money is not zero-sum after all, it's created and deleted all the time.
Within a country, it's preferable to address the crime, not the flow of the money, but what do you do if a foreign government is complicit in the crime? Shouldn't governments do their best to turn away dirty money?
Free flow of capital and trade is one of the best way to deescalate conflict between nations, and is something both sides should restrain from interfering no matter how much they hate each other.
A China-US-type confrontation is much preferable over an Iran-US-type confrontation.
>Such a share of transactions is “sufficiently large to have an observable impact on real estate prices,” the report said. It estimated that dirty money pushed B.C. home prices 3.7% to 7.5% higher than they would be in the absence of laundering.
So yes it has an effect, but it is a tiny proportion of the price, something on the order of 5%.
Vancouver home prices have soared since 2000. Detached homes cost $400,000 then, and $1,800,000 now.
So yes, in that context, a 5% increase is indeed tiny. The popular conception is that "substantially all" of the rise in price has been due to foreign speculation.
> The popular conception is that "substantially all" of the rise in price has been due to foreign speculation"
Just like "money laundering caused x% of the increase in property prices", the above is a meme, the actual truth of which is unknown. Once repeated enough, such memes eventually turn into axioms (~popular "facts") that then contribute to erroneous thinking in all subsequent discussions.
Once you fully realize and appreciate how important this rarely noticed aspect of human/crowd perception is, reading the news (and discussion about it) becomes a very different experience, I highly recommend trying it.
I'm curious if the underlying analysis considered the compounding effect this has. Someone sells their place for 1 million for laundering, someone with a comparable property who thought it was only worth the 998k now sells it for 1 million, and all the way down. Now next year you've set the baseline 2% higher and so next year everyone adds on 2% of land appreciation cost. But now the next wave of dirty money pushes it another 2%. So net effect over time is much larger than what happens just because of a reduction in supply/increase in demand which I suspect is all that was analyzed.
980k would be 2%.
But more importantly, why would the person buy a property for more than it was worth just because they're laundering money? They would buy a million dollar house at fair value to launder their money.
Because you would expect to lose 40-100% of money you don't launder, either through taxes or confiscation.
So a nominal loss is acceptable. The main thing is to get it laundered, and there is usually some price to pay to do so.
Tony Montana's downfall in scarface happened because he didn't understand this. Here's a scene where his banker explains to him difficulties in laundering as volume rises:
Firstly, the choice is not between a 2% loss or a 40% loss. The choice is between a 2% loss and a 0% loss by buying or selling at the fair market price. Why take a loss if you don't need to?
Secondly, I don't think I agree with your descriptions of the mechanics.
I will quote user @lsc below: "You realize that "money laundering" usually isn't about tax evasion, right? it's about figuring out how to take money gotten from an illegal venture and figuring out how to make that money come from a trackably legitimate source, which means paying taxes on it"
You want to spend the money, which is why you are bringing it into the "white" economy.
Nominal loss is acceptable to many people. If you are worth 10 billion, you might be okay with taking a 1% loss on a million dollar home to just to speed things up. This has nothing to do with it being black or white. You will be just as sensitive or insensitive to losses if you don't need to take them. That is, if you can be patient and get full price, you will do so.
Money laundering often does involve tax evasion. You can launder a source of income that would be taxable into another source that isn't. Laundering the proceeeds of crime to avoid confiscation may or may not do this.
The implied point I didn't spell out is that it can be difficult to launder money without taking a nominal loss. Obviously, if you can avoid it, you do. But if the loss is less than the loss you fear from not laundering, it still looks attractive.
I don't know the chinese case, but I'm assuming capital controls and other laws in both china and the receiving country in some way make it easier to buy and keep real estate compared to more productive assets. There are also advantages such as helping with visas, etc
The comment is in reference to how much it can explain the growth in house prices. Vancouver has seen >60% growth in the past five years. So, 5% is tiny in explaining the growth.
>> It is ESTIMATED that dirty money pushed B.C. home prices 3.7% to 7.5% higher than they would be in the absence of laundering."
> So yes it has an effect, but it IS a tiny proportion of the price, something on the order of 5%."
"...it is a tiny proportion of the price..."
Technically, the degree to which it affected prices is unknown. Our understanding of market pricing is far from sufficient to make any confident and specific (to one decimal place no less!) assertions about how much of price increases were "caused" by money laundering. Market behaviors (price & volume) can bleed over into the realm of human psychology, setting off a self-reinforcing feedback loop of greed. When this happens, setting of another x% of price increases, is it correct or incorrect to say that particular portion was caused by the demand from money laundering? Once again, the correct answer is: we do not know.
Any claims by anyone on this specific subset (the degree to which is certain things caused particular price increases) of the topic is inherently speculative, for more reasons than just the one outlined above (another obvious reason is, several of our input variables into the price increase model are themselves estimates).
These people are from countries where the people in favour of the government get rich, and the rich people not in favour of the government get poor. They are currently in favour of their respective governments and even though they probably spend considerate efforts to keep it that way, they know this can change any day without them doing anything wrong. They probably know it better than anyone, being part of that system. Putting their money where their government can't get it gives them an immense security benefit.
If it were merely that, there might be something to it, but the article presents claims that it's mostly organised crime, or money from countries sanctioned by the US.
Well yeah, Chinese millionaires shoving money into things it will be hard for the Chinese .gov to seize doesn't make for nearly as juicy of a story as organized crime. With the current political situation the selection of the laundering proceeds of crime narrative rather than the sheltering assets from government makes further sense.
The fact of the matter is that the article is nothing but hearsay. Sure, it looks like there's some sketchy money laundering going on but getting your money out of China and flying under the radar while doing it is likely to involve the same sorts of laundering shenanigans as liquidating the proceeds of crime.
Much of the money sliding around in China is grey money, so it is likely to be money laundering from the Chinese perspective. And a lot of that money is earned via prostitution, gambling dens, and whatever that are typically thought of us crimes. Heck, organized crime is rife in China, except rather than being run by a mob, its more often run by the PLA or police.
Admittedly, it’s not that bad anymore (Xi has really cracked down and things have cleaned up a lot), but it was 10 years ago that this wasn’t the case, that is at least some of the money going to Canada.
Aren't many of the housing booms in the largest cities (London, New York, etc) essentially fueled by capital flight, which is dirty money in some proportion?
Perhaps they are. But in BC - and honestly that mostly means Vancouver - it was just egregious and completely out of control.
1. Lawyers in BC are exempt from reporting suspected money laundering activity - protected by solicitor client privilege. Trust accounts were horrifically abused to move billions into real estate.
2. Gangs literally washed bags of cash at casinos with virtually no oversight.
3. Billions - literally billions - worth of exotic cars were bought with dirty money and exported to China in shipping containers to avoid BC luxury vehicle tax and Chinese car taxes.
When the dust settles on this episode, BC will probably have the reputation of the seediest corner of the developed world wrt money laundering.
Australia too. Reportedly 70% of Chinese buying property in Sydney and Melbourne pay in cash [1]
Exempted from our anti money laundering KYC laws are realestate sellers, lawyers, and accountants (setting up corporate structures to circumvent foreign ownership review board scrutiny) [2]
The median house price in Sydney is now greater than $1,000,000 while the average gross wage is $82,000 per annum.
It's way out of whack, and unfettered money laundering into realestate purchases is partly to blame.
Chinese people are equally upset with those criminals who looted and parked money overseas. Please consider supporting Australia-China extradition treaty.
They'll have a long way to go before outpacing London [0] but perhaps Brexit will have some value after all! I can't link to the primary source but Private Eye is one of the best oversights in the UK. The proprietor, Ian Hislop, was purportedly the most sued man in Britain at one point [1].
It's my understanding that the casino laundering scheme has been going on for decades but I can't imagine that'll go on forever. I'm not too sure where you go from there. I guess start a 'legitimate' cash business but I imagine there's much better ways.
"exported to China ... to avoid ... Chinese car taxes"
If you want to avoid Chinese car taxes, exporting a car to China doesn't seem like a good start.
It's common for consumption taxes to be paid where the item is consumed. So if these exports 'avoid BC luxury vehicle tax' as you say, this makes total sense.
But those cars would be subject to tax when imported into China.
If you're a car manufacturer that sells your cars at higher pre-tax prices in China than in the rest of the world (i.e. most car manufacturers) then you don't want people to do this.
I think the implication is that they have some corrupt buddies on the receiving side in China. Or it could be like here in Thailand where they catch people buying luxury cars in other countries, breaking them down into multiple pieces, shipping them in, then reassembling them. There's a lot of ways to break the law.
The issue you point out is relatively new. I'm talking about prices rising for the last 2-3 years in very specific zones of Madrid (Barrio Salamanca for example).
Nothing new and has been going on for 60+ years around the world. Why's London so damn expensive? Tons of dirty money. Why's NYC so damn expensive? Tons of dirty money buying up buildings too.
And Miami, NYC, LA, London, etc. But then again, dirty money ( opium wars ) is how modern banking in the industrial age got started. Though, we should expand "dirty" money to more than drugs and crime. Legally attained money could be dirty as well.
global interest rates have dropped so low that for the past 10+ years the baby boomer generation was speculating on property as investment, self-managing/leveraging their nest egg and avoiding the stock market or industry funds. this is a depreciating asset especially with declining population numbers.
the bottom should drop out of the market when they all die in another 10-20 years, or if rates rise back up to pre crisis levels, or if people decide to work remotely and buy land and build houses in more rural areas.
in canada the rate went from 16% in 1991 to 0.25% in 2009. the new crisis should begin around the mid 2020s, probably as trump leaves office. similar to the bush-obama transition or the clinton-bush one.
Makes sense. If you are a rich person in Russia or Brazil you never know when things may go bad and having a safe house in Vancouver or London or Paris is a good idea.
At least that dirty cash does some good in Canada.
If you read the report there is a lot speculation and hedging on figures. The press is just reporting a figure on the high end of their estimates. There is also a lot of information on their methodology. They say it’s hard to figure out exactly how much is laundered and what effect it does have on the housing boom. They actually say that supply and demand plays a huge factor too.
None of these allegations have been proven in court. If the investigator in charge is so certain that the individuals conducting these transactions are members of organized crime groups, and the money came from criminal activity, why haven't any charges being laid against them?
With money laundering laws, the government doesn't have to prove any crime happened. It does an end run around due process.
The government focuses on a symptom (money laundering) of an underlying problem (organized crime generating hundreds of millions of dollars from criminal enterprises), enlists the media to make sensationalist claims about said symptom based on hearsay, and builds public consent for invasive new surveillance laws that criminalize financial privacy and seize private property without the government having to prove any crime happened (civil forfeiture).
Meanwhile, the underlying problem that the government professed to be concerned about is allowed to fester.
I was looking at home prices there a few months ago and was shocked. If I sold our 4 bedroom home on 5 acres I'd barely be able to make a down payment on a condo there.
or just stop using public money on whitelisting transactions, how much resources is British Columbia spending on trying to flag transactions. The best they got after all of this is a report from GERMANY talking about it, and now they are lobbying the Canadian federal government for MORE resources to combat it, WHY? To what end? So that housing prices rise 65% instead of 70%? WOW okay, and regarding the lofty goal of stopping terrorist financing how about looking at all the terrorist attacks that didn't happen with all those billions disappearing where the origin was unknown and now the current unknown recipient has integrated it into the economy completely indistinct from everyone else.
The funny thing about "dirty cash" and money laundering is that this designation is reserved for AFTER you discover what the origin of the money was AND ALSO have seen it converted into a clean source. The action of converting it into a clean source doesn't make it dirty before hand, hence no money laundering. The onus is on the government. Money laundering itself just being an added on charge to help make an indictment stick, when you can't actually pin the crime to acquire the dirty money on anyone. How much would that cost British Columbia to figure out? Would be the dumbest use of public coffers
>how much resources is British Columbia spending on trying to flag transactions
I'm in BC. The honest answer to this is really nothing.
No one at a higher level cared at all about this, since they were raking in a ton from transaction fees.
Sounds to me like all of these cities and their containing states and further countries are on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve. And / or have policies which have a higher cost of obedience than the risk/ reward of illegally skirting them.
Give people legal ways to invest / spend. Sure the criminals will still launder drug money, but then you can isolate that.
You realize that "money laundering" usually isn't about tax evasion, right? it's about figuring out how to take money gotten from an illegal venture and figuring out how to make that money come from a trackably legitimate source, which means paying taxes on it
So, having a lower tax rate, all other things equal, is going to make your state a more attractive destination for money laundering.
One problem that comes to mind is that housing has become far, far less affordable than it would be without the distorting effect of $millions-billions' worth of housing sitting vacant and unused.
Can't speak to Vancouver specifically unfortunately, but I'm dealing with "Her Majesty's Royal Water ownership" while trying to rebuild an old breakwater on my property.
Or if you look at US corporate tax law, until it was updated last year, hundreds of "America companies" were parking their money in Ireland because it was too expensive to bring it back to the US.
I imagine Canada's marijuana legalization will take a bite out of the drug laundering at the casinos.
The article is nothing but hearsay. Sure, it looks like there's some sketchy money laundering going on but getting your money out of China and flying under the radar while doing it is likely to involve the same sorts of laundering shenanigans as liquidating the proceeds of crime.
Edit: Oh really, where is the non-hearsay in this article?
Not to the level of what goes on in the article, but I personally work with someone that left BC, went back to China and returned with the entirety of his Chinese retirement in cash. He got back and immediately bought a new car and other things.
CBC News reported this sometime back :
https://youtu.be/NIq1nMWRIG4