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Comment by ttul | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

[1] https://www.propertynerd.com.au/news/chinese-laundering-mone...

[2] https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/10/australia-worlds-we...

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.

[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."

You may find this[1] a very interesting read.

[1] https://www.vanityfair.com/style/society/2013/04/mysterious-...

Wow. I’ve admired that building a number of times when I’ve been in London. This is insane:

“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...”

The corruption enabled by ancient City Of London corporation is really interesting. I first learned of it here:

https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-73-western-me...

I dunno. Deutsche Bank has a pretty impressive record of being involved in every major money scandal in the last 20 years.

"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.

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