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?
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.
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.
[1] https://www.propertynerd.com.au/news/chinese-laundering-mone...
[2] https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/10/australia-worlds-we...
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.
[0] - https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2012-08-09/lon...
[1] - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/ian-hislo... - "Since then, Hislop has become the most sued man in English legal history, though he says the rate of libel actions is slowing."
[1] https://www.vanityfair.com/style/society/2013/04/mysterious-...
https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-73-western-me...
“That’s not because the apartments haven’t sold. London land-registry records say that 76 had been by January 2013 for a total of $2.7 billion...”
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.