BC’s Public Registry to Combat Money Laundering: Broken on Arrival

Money Launderers Will Easily Dodge Detection under New BC Public Land Registry

• British Columbia’s new public land registry has significant flaws that greatly undermine its ability to help investigators detect money laundering in BC real estate.
• In “BC’s Public Registry to Combat Money Laundering: Broken on Arrival” Kevin Comeau lays out the changes that should be made to the registry to give it the teeth it needs to be a serious deterrent to criminals, including improving identity verification and searchability, imposing prison sentences on those who provide false information, and scrapping the $5 user fee.
• If the key recommendations in the report are adopted, the BC public registry would become a powerful tool to combat money laundering in BC real estate. It would help reduce upward pressure on housing costs, generate significant government revenue, undermine the principal foundation upon which international money-laundering systems are built, and provide added safeguards against international money laundering, including from authoritarian regimes.