Toronto's housing market, like Vancouver's, has become magnet for money launderers: study

Toronto’s housing market has become a target for money laundering or “snow washing,” thanks to anonymous property ownership, weak regulation and lax enforcement, according to a new study.

In that period, $9.8 billion of housing was bought by companies through cash purchases, largely bypassing anti-money laundering checks on fund sources and beneficial owners, according to the study, which analyzed more than 1.4 million residential sales dating back to 2008. The report follows a similar one on Vancouver in 2016 that revealed almost half of the city’s most valuable property owners were unknown and hiding behind shell companies, trusts and nominee owners. This led to greater enforcement from the provincial government, including proposing a registry for beneficial owners for property.

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