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"Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

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Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#121

Post by hnarn »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #108

I have said this over and over again: Canada is the most overrated of all the developed countries. The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate, with horrible service quality, terrible healthcare, no jobs, ZERO innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship. Having lived and travelled extensively, most Canadians want a house somewhere in the woods instead of doing something meaningful with t…

> The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate

That’s quite the statement, I assume you have quite the source for it.

The price-to-rent ratio isn’t that far off from the US, for example.

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#122

Post by emmanuel_1234 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #18
saiya-jin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at any wiki article on any major global bank, the chapter about 'controversies and legal issues' is always a thick list, HSBC ain't worse or better than others. There are no good guys there, that's not why the business was set up and corresponding folks were/are hired. If you want more controls, enforce more regulations, they do work if well defined.

> HSBC ain't worse or better than others Money laundering does seem to be their choice in poisons.

That's because they are one of the most global bank, therefore a prime choice when it comes to moving money from countries to countries. Most bank have a much smaller global footprint and can't be used as such.

Banks don't benefit from their customer laundering money just like landlords don't benefit from drug trafficking in their building: it's a hindrance and it costs a lot to do anything about it.

Source: I work on AML in a global bank.

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#123

Post by nimbius »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #108

I have said this over and over again: Canada is the most overrated of all the developed countries. The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate, with horrible service quality, terrible healthcare, no jobs, ZERO innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship. Having lived and travelled extensively, most Canadians want a house somewhere in the woods instead of doing something meaningful with t…

>most Canadians want a house somewhere in the woods instead of doing something meaningful with their lives or try and innovate to build something.

to be fair most Canadians were promised this as part of their countries stratospheric growth under neoliberalist policies. that they are not capable of it is no fault of their own. that they want this is at all is not a bane.

> Where US got the best talent from India, Canada got the worst, the ones who scam their way here and take the lowest level jobs.

dividing immigrants into "good ones" and "bad ones" is pretty vile, but as an american i must acquiesce we've played that game for a long time. before hispanics it was asians, before asians it was europeans (the irish particularly.) turns out blaming immigration is a fools errand to distract from domestic class warfare.

the real question for Canada now is not "how do we punish the immigrant" but what do elected leaders in the political class do to affect meaningful restitution and corrective action in the face of what is a national crisis. Either they see clearly and will reform their own cash cow, or they will blindly ride it off a cliff in the hopes that through their own profit they can weather the coming storm.

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#124

Post by asah »

causi wrote: post #3

It's quite bizarre any jurisdiction would allow someone to buy housing there when they can't legally live in it.

There's "housing" and then there's $5+MM manhattan apartments, which are so inflated above their value as functional housing as to effectively be NFTs. People whine about the pencil shaped buildings but they shutup fast when they see that it causes zero inflation to lower-end housing prices and a big help to city budgets.

Also, strategically, having powerful people own expensive real estate influences them to visit and maybe not bomb it... at least, it's better than them never having stepped foot there. The famous example is Kyoto not being nuked because an American leader had seen it firsthand[1]. The Nazis spared Paris was apparently spared for similar reasons[2].

The counterexample is NYC which everybody loves to crap on (Gerald Ford "drop dead", 1993 bombing, 9/11, and lots of failed terrorist attacks since), presumably as a symbol of American greed and excess, but also as a symbol of urban chaos, rot and violence.

[1] https://collider.com/oppenheimer-improvised-line-kyoto/

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=Nazis+spared+Paris

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#125

Post by JumpCrisscross »

emmanuel_1234 wrote: post #122
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HSBC ain't worse or better than others Money laundering does seem to be their choice in poisons.

That's because they are one of the most global bank, therefore a prime choice when it comes to moving money from countries to countries. Most bank have a much smaller global footprint and can't be used as such. Banks don't benefit from their customer laundering money just like landlords don't benefit from drug trafficking in their building: it's a hindrance and it costs a lot to do anything about it. Source: I work o…

> they are one of the most global bank

By what metric? I’d argue the driving factor is their proximity to dirty money. Same with Russian banks. Then other people notice you’re used to looking the other way and you get word-of-mouth network effects. With money launderers.

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#126

Post by logicchains »

silent_cal wrote: post #103
SunlightEdge wrote: post #100

To maybe offer a different perspective: I think the Canadian mortgages linked to Chinese accounts will likely all be paid. What may be happening is that there is a lot of underground chinese financial activity that is not recorded in Canada and part of this 'network' is utilized to get money out of china.

It's still fraud

It's a small wrong to right the much bigger wrong of the tyrannical Chinese government preventing people from taking their money out of the country.

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#127

Post by hnav »

hnarn wrote: post #121
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #108

I have said this over and over again: Canada is the most overrated of all the developed countries. The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate, with horrible service quality, terrible healthcare, no jobs, ZERO innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship. Having lived and travelled extensively, most Canadians want a house somewhere in the woods instead of doing something meaningful with t…

> The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate That’s quite the statement, I assume you have quite the source for it. The price-to-rent ratio isn’t that far off from the US, for example.

but incomes are generally much lower

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#128

Post by radicaldreamer »

ThisIsMyAltAcct wrote: post #25

> The whistleblower, whom The Bureau is calling D.M., immigrated to Canada as an international student from India, making him a minority among mostly Chinese-Canadian co-workers at the Aurora branch. > “I am going to reveal potential mortgage fraud at HSBC Bank Canada and possibly some employees benefited from the fraud, financially pocketing thousands of dollars, which I call the proceeds of crime.” > FINTRAC’s stud…

Are US banks just a lot more strict about source of income than Canadian banks?

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#129

Post by guidedlight »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #108

I have said this over and over again: Canada is the most overrated of all the developed countries. The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate, with horrible service quality, terrible healthcare, no jobs, ZERO innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship. Having lived and travelled extensively, most Canadians want a house somewhere in the woods instead of doing something meaningful with t…

Everything you write is also true if you replace Canada with Australia.

Re: "Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks

#130

Post by radicaldreamer »

jacquesm wrote: post #27
saiya-jin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at any wiki article on any major global bank, the chapter about 'controversies and legal issues' is always a thick list, HSBC ain't worse or better than others. There are no good guys there, that's not why the business was set up and corresponding folks were/are hired. If you want more controls, enforce more regulations, they do work if well defined.

HSBC seems worse than many others. When I moved to Canada my immigration lawyer explicitly advised to stay away from HSBC, this was in 2000 or so and they already had a pretty bad rep. The various scandals since then haven't improved that reputation. TD, CT and RB have their own problems but none of them have received even close to the total fines that HSBC has (to the best of my knowledge). I agree there are no good…

They started off as an opium bank, that heritage and culture still pervades their business practices.

If you want to read more about this: https://philebersole.com/2013/02/15/hsbcs-history-and-the-or...

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