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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

#281

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.

> I think the Canadian mortgages linked to Chinese accounts will likely all be paid.

If Canadian banks agree with this risk assessment, they have little incentive to actually verify income in these cases.

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

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total conjecture: 1. US banks do not face nearly as diverse a set of applicants, and 2. are only required to hold the loan for 5 years. 1. It is very common in Canada for a person with wealth acquired outside the country to apply for a home loan. At the time I was approved as a guarantor for a home loan for over half a million CAD, I had only been in the country for 2 years, and had no credit history with any Canadia…

I got the feeling that the HSBC in Bellevue Washington catered primarily to overseas Chinese clients looking to buy homes in the Seattle area. Most of the employees spoke some dialect of Chinese. I have no idea about the loan officers, however.

Bellevue's population is ~14% Chinese, over 21,000 people, and mostly high income tech salaries. It would be bad business not to have Chinese speakers on staff.

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

#284
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the Canadian mortgages linked to Chinese accounts will likely all be paid. This is a "heads, I win", "tails, you lose" type of scam. The mortgage holders are all judgement proof. They have no income or assets to go after. So if the housing market crashes, the banks have no recourse. It's the same as taking out a mortgage and instead of buying a house, you go to the casino and bet double or nothing. Sure, th…

> So if the housing market crashes, the banks have no recourse The housing market must first crash before the problem is tangible, and there's no sign of that happening.

Yes that's exactly what the person you're replying to said

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

#285
post #140

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

Which one? Canadians I find are pretty ignorant about the health care in Canada and think it’s the same thing across the board, while it’s actually the individual provinces that each have their own setup (with pros and cons)

It’s easy to spot when people speak of healthcare in general without being specific.

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

#286

> during the Covid-19 pandemic, because Canadian casinos were closed, Chinese underground banking schemes evolved Hang on, what... I want to hear more about the Chinese underground casino stuff.

https://betterdwelling.com/vancouver-laundering-model-that-i...

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

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That comes out of the company's wallet, but does it come out of a person's? Persons responsible for committing crimes, not customers or other third party members. HSBC has trillions in holding, so those numbers might not be as big as they appear.

They literally clawed back bonuses from all of the executives involved in the compliance failures.

Oh no their bonuses. I’m sure it was tough not being able to spend the summer in Martha’s Vineyard that year.

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

#288

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…

Don't they? Surely they make some interest on the money if it is parked for any length of time? Plus transaction fees and such? And individuals probably get bonuses etc. based on volume in some way? (IANAB(anker), just wild guesses here.)

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

#289

> 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?

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