Canada: Vancouver supercar dealerships next target in money laundering crackdown

By NATALIE OBIKO PEARSON Bloomberg

A money laundering crackdown sparked by lavish bets at Vancouver gambling tables has a new target in sight: The city’s gleaming luxury dealerships where buyers can pay cash for $300,000 supercars.

“Going after money laundering is very much like whack-a-mole,” British Columbia Attorney General David Eby said in a phone interview Tuesday from Ottawa, where he’d travelled to plead for federal help in battling dirty money. “We can take the cash out of the casino, but it’s going somewhere else and we need to identify where and take action to address it.”

Eby has been spearheading an anti-money laundering drive by Premier John Horgan, who became Premier eight months ago. A 2016 report that the previous government hadn’t disclosed indicated large amounts of suspicious cash had been flowing through British Columbian casinos.

Eby said Tuesday that it’s likely illicit money has been fuelling sales of luxury vehicles and boats, as well as Vancouver’s notoriously expensive property market.

“Vancouver has been described as the No. 1 supercar city in North America,” Eby told a finance committee in Ottawa earlier Tuesday. He defined a supercar as any vehicle costing more than $150,000. “I would love for us to be tracking people buying supercars with cash.”

In December, the province imposed new rules on casinos requiring them to complete source-of-funds declarations for deposits of $10,000 or more in cash. They were also prohibited from accepting cash from customers involved in two consecutive cash transactions until it was determined the source wasn’t suspicious or illegal.

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