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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

#131

Post by mtalantikite »

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.

Tangentially related, there was an undercover Vice News report on the connections between Chinese Triads and the Mexico/US fentanyl trade a couple months ago [1]. I also wouldn't be surprised if there were underground networks of capital in Canada that were related to these mortgages.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8wEGVIPJ_4

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

#133

Post by emmanuel_1234 »

fallat wrote: post #104
wisemang wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably referring to the fact RBC is set to acquire HSBC’s Canadian business.

Brings to question: did RBC know? How did they not know?

RBC probably indulges in this as well. HSBC just has way more ties to Hong Kong and China than RBC does.

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

#134

Post by seanmcdirmid »

maxglute wrote: post #102
jabbany wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But even Chinese citizens can also pool those $50k yearly allocations, it doesn’t take a lot of friends and family to do that. So as an observer of this, you will see money coming out of one place, spread to many accounts, wired overseas to different recipients, then re-aggregated... What do you think that looks like...? Surely not money laundering?

Not on Canada's end, it's a bunch of people using legal capital controls to get money into Canada. On PRC end, it's evading capital controls, which depending on your geopolitical alignment, can be illegal activity. But if you're in the west, you want that Chinese money. Free money from competitotrs as good as brain drain from competitors.

Capital controls have bad intentions anyways, I have no qualm with PRC citizens trying to avoid them. Not everyone in the west wants or likes Chinese money. It does lead to them basically exporting their bubble abroad, but Japan did the same in the 80s before their big bust.

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

#135

Post by creato »

user3939382 wrote: post #82
mikeyouse wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The government asked for their cut" actually means that for laundering that $881 million in cartel money - they were fined $1.9 billion and then had to pay an additional $665 million in other civil penalties. They wouldn't do it again and again because they don't earn $880 million when accepting $880 million in dirty money - remember that bank deposits are liabilities to the bank - they only earn money from interest…

I'd be very surprised if the $880M was the extent of the crime. The government not jailing anyone involved in the scheme is completely inexcusable and in my view makes the government complicit in the crime, in which case my trust that the public information about this case is accurate is 0.

HSBC probably got a few percent of that $880M in fees/interest/whatever. So unless they were laundering ~100x more than that, the fines absolutely did make all of that crime (even if it wasn't the full extent of it) net negative for the bank, and probably by a lot.

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

#137

Post by Archelaos »

nimbius wrote: post #123
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, Cana…

> dividing immigrants into "good ones" and "bad ones" is pretty vile

Isn't that the case everywhere where immigration is restricted?

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

#138

Post by speg »

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…

As a Canadian who has ideas of building an off grid cabin in the woods, what would be a more meaningful life?

The stereotypical poor American working menial jobs into their senior years without affordable healthcare doesn’t sound much better…

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

#139

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jabbany wrote: post #94
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be real Chinese income backed by fake paper work (money laundering) or fake income backed by fake paper work (fraud). You can take out $50k per year, a lot more via exemptions, so you don’t need money laundering to get money out of china into the USA (I had to move a few hundred K before, all the paper work was legit).

> You can take out $50k per year Try buying a house with 50k a year... This is exactly what the "scheme" solves. You have new immigrants who have (in many cases) legitimate money (e.g. by selling property back in china) but cannot move it out of the country quickly due to capital controls on the chinese side. Since mortgages are meant to spread out costs over time, it's the perfect solution. However, banks (understan…

Foreigners on Z visas can wire out whatever they earn, so for me it wasn’t an issue. There are even foreigners who rent out some of their allocations since you always have PRC expenses, but this is of course illegal.

I used my wife’s $50k allocation once because I was held up by some paper work (you need a lot of paper work, notarized, etc…). They didn’t ask any questions about what it would be used for, but this was 2016, and they changed the rules a few months later.

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

#140

Post by m3kw9 »

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…

Despite what you have “heard” the heath care system is quite nice
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