Real Estate
Dirty Money Didn’t Cause Vancouver’s Housing Crisis, Probe Finds
- Three-year inquiry investigated money laundering in province
- Canada’s anti-money laundering regime flawed, it concludes
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A three-year public inquiry into money laundering in a western Canadian province, prompted in part by public speculation that criminals were driving up housing prices in Vancouver, has found that dirty money didn’t cause the region’s unaffordability crisis.
The inquiry, led by British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Austin Cullen, was widely anticipated among local politicians, media and housing advocates, who in recent years have blamed the nation’s most expensive property market on criminal money -- in particular, from Asia. Cullen’s exhaustive report, more than 1,800 pages long and based on testimony from 188 witnesses and more than 1,000 exhibits, countered those assumptions.