Financial Transparency Coalition

Transparency International said today that the governments of Australia, Canada, the UK and the US need to close glaring legal loopholes to prevent the corrupt elite from laundering the proceeds of grand corruption in their local real estate markets.

We’ve known for a while that anonymous shell companies have been used to purchase property everywhere from London to Los Angeles. Funneling potentially illicit money into high end real estate has turned out to be an easy way to bypass many of the checks that might be necessary if you moved the money into a bank

The U.S. Treasury Department today announced it will require people purchasing high end real estate in New York and Miami to disclose who they really are. Global Witness strongly welcomes this move, which will help stop the criminal and corrupt from hiding behind anonymously owned shell companies to launder the proceeds of crime through the

Real estate is often the choice conduit for money launderers to transfer money, primarily because it can be difficult to misprice, but also because of the way some countries write their laws.