4 ms·

US/Canada 2024, $3 billion in fines by US regulators, https://rupakghose.substack.com/p/td-banks-aml-issues-and-fintechs https://rupakghose.substack.com/p/td-ba

US/Canada 2024, $3 billion in fines by US regulators, https://rupakghose.substack.com/p/td-banks-aml-issues-and-fintechs https://rupakghose.substack.com/p/td-banks-aml-issues-and-fi... > DoJ investigation found.. [banking] business had been used to launder more than $650m between 2016 and 2021 from US fentanyl sales for Chinese crime groups and drug traffickers. Canada 2018, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33918115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33918115 > An estimated $5.3 billion of laundered money into B.C. real estate in 2018 hiked housing prices 5 per cent, two special reports released Thursday by the provincial government show. Australia 2015, https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2015/06/stop-money-laundering-so-our-kids-can-buy-homes/ https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2015/06/stop-money-launderi... > Credit Suisse estimates some $28 billion of Chinese money has been invested in the Australian housing market over the past six years

mulmen 2y ago
Is there any reason to believe the Australian investment is related to money laundering or drug sales?
- averageRoyalty 2y ago
  No. The linked article admits they're wildly guessing and links to another report with recommendations but no numbers I saw from a skim. I hear this repeated regularly on HN but am yet to see a reliable source beyond "but it's Chinese money".
- Garvi 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - shakna 2y ago
    No. Australia's national money laundering assessment [0] is not virtue signalling as a cover for racism. There's a history of money laundering for terrorism, child exploitation, slavery, and drug trafficking. There's also a history of arrests, and government task force projects to try and change that. [0] https://www.austrac.gov.au/business/how-comply-guidance-and-resources/guidance-resources/money-laundering-australia-national-risk-assessment-2024 https://www.austrac.gov.au/business/how-comply-guidance-and-...
    - zaphirplane 2y ago
      My interpretation is that the parent is referring to the link between Chinese realestate buyers in Australia and criminal activity. It’s almost subliminal how the conversation shifted
    - jimz 2y ago
      There was also the "white Australia policy" though. And China is the perfect scapegoat, like NK, since they seldom make public statements, and when they do, the west tend to treat it as across the board false. But the top Area Studies scholars are not working for the government. I hang out in quite a few Chinese telegram chats (mostly sysadmins and just bullshitting - the term translates well literally but carries a slightly different connotation in that it's not falsity per se but bragging/exaggeration OR falsity, depending on context). There's a pretty general sense of neo-imperialistic motives on the part of the west and it's hard to blame them considering that for a nation that wasn't annexed it effectively had very little to no say in the administration of various parts of its territories for 160 years. Whether out of arrogance or because there's a huge blind spot (or both), this has led to missing out on numerous opportunities in effectively gain leverage on the CCP in significant ways, like getting rid of the quota system for H1-B visas so those who were on F-1s and graduate can actually stay and work in the US, or give general asylum to the protestors against the Chinese takeover of HK, a cohort that is educated, have relevant skills, speaks English, and compared to the rest of China, are relatively wealthy. The official fear of a brain drain have been around since the 1880s - the Chinese Exclusion Act was the preferred policy of both the US and Chinese governments, one that helped nobody and legitimized racism parallel to Jim Crow. One would think that we'd be over that by now. There's some chatter that there's a soft-coup since Xi haven't been leading the nightly 30 minutes of propaganda, probably for the first time since the 1980s the news, broadcast nationally, didn't lead off with some inane report of leadership meeting dignitaries. The truth is anybody's guess but an actual military coup is unlikely to occur after the Lin Biao incident. The fact that America doesn't even seem to be aware of this is telling, and in North Korea's case, even more amplified. Also, a nation-state cannot by definite launder any money since money laundering is only a thing because the state wants its cut. But here, by their theory, all of the money is going to the nation-state so... what laundering are they talking about? Theft, perhaps. Expropriation? Sure. But laundering? That makes no sense unless you internalize that America or whoever is actually the world's policeman. Good luck with maintaining credibility with that outlook.
- shakna 2y ago
  The FATF report goes into it in more detail [0], but to put it very simply - Australia doesn't have the protections it should, when it comes to money laundering. [0] https://www.fatf-gafi.org/content/dam/fatf-gafi/mer/Mutual-Evaluation-Report-Australia-2015.pdf https://www.fatf-gafi.org/content/dam/fatf-gafi/mer/Mutual-E...
- phyalow 2y ago
  In my empirical experience, its more to do with stashing the proceeds of state capture by politically connected individuals in China.
__turbobrew__ 2y ago
Another reason why we should only allow Canadian nationals to own real estate in Canada.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  What about shell companies? Corporations are people too!
  - yunohn 2y ago
    Governments will never remove that - it’s a super important construct to allow everyone except the average citizens to avoid all sorts of taxes.
  - givemeethekeys 2y ago
    Thats an easy fix: Only Canadian shell companies can own real estate in Canada! =)
- pjkundert 2y ago
  Or, you know… build more houses. We could drop western Europe into central BC / Alberta/ Sask. / Manitoba and not notice. Or, we could destroy our small builders, import millions of immigrants incapable of construction / trade work, inflate asset prices, pay for their housing with government grants, lie about CPI inflation, and fix it all if we just… “only allow Canadian nationals to own real estate”?
  - __turbobrew__ 2y ago
    There are many things which could be done. I think ideologically it makes sense that if you want to own land in a country you need to be a citizen of that country. You need “skin in the game” so to speak, if you want to enjoy owning property in a location you need to make a commitment to that nation — the good parts and the bad parts.
endgame 2y ago
> Australia Don't worry, Australia's going to fix that! By making "harming public confidence in the banking system or financial markets" "serious harm" under the upcoming Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024. And by "fix", I mean "suppress discussion about", of course.
- CoastalCoder 2y ago
  There's no shortage of things to complain about regarding the U.S., but its First Amendment is pretty great IMHO.
  - tryauuum 2y ago
    I wanted to comment that any country has something about freedom of speech in their constitution, the problem is usually that the government doesn't respect its own law. But when I went to compare american and russian constitutions and if you only judge the text, the us is worded better. In russian it's simply "freedom of speech is guaranteed to anyone" while in the us it's more specific about not creating new laws harming freedom of speech.
    - walterbell 2y ago
      > not creating new laws harming freedom of speech Tests are helpful, when writing rules. US freedom of speech has been influenced by law on asymmetry of economic resources in groups vs. individuals [2010], allowing state propaganda in domestic media [2012], and gov-corp coordination of social media moderation [2024]. [2010]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_(organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_(organization) [2012]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act [2024]https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/justices-side-with-biden-over-governments-influence-on-social-media-content-moderation/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/justices-side-with-biden-...
    - amy-petrik-214 2y ago
      It was once said by a famous african dictator: “There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.” ― Forest Whitaker So maybe it is like this. It's a funny thing to say, because in this mindset there is freedom literally to do anything. Consequences come after, minutes, hours, days, years, but after and not before, at least not until OpenAI-Google's new "PrescientCrimeCAItcher" comes online. These "community guidelines" are quite frustrating because a major communication modality presently does not have freedom of speech, it has removal of speech it does not like. So that's an interesting loophole legalese-wise. Presently these are private sector companies running addicting entertaining boards from which they serve ads for profit. If these are instead made to be "utilities" like power or water, utilities of communication, I would imagine the calculus would change
TacticalCoder 2y ago
> DoJ investigation found.. [banking] business had been used to launder more than $650m between 2016 and 2021 from US fentanyl sales for Chinese crime groups and drug traffickers. According to the official CIA "world factbook" or whatever that is called: an estimated 3% to 5% of the world's fucking entire GDP is linked to criminal activities. Blockchains are cool in that they allow to follow the laundering (so it allows for nice blog entries with good looking graphs, which I do appreciate), as opposed to traditional banks where it's all opaque. But the amount of money laundered using cryptocurrencies is a drop in the bucket compared to size of criminal activities ongoing in the world (btw criminal activities predates blockchain by centuries or millenia). And don't get me started on the missing billions when "aid" is sent to this and that country. Be it Ukraine or Haiti or whatever: there are corrupt officials and individuals at every single step of the ladder. My favorite is the US loading a 747 with 12 billions in bills of $100 USD to "help the reconstruction of Iraq" and officially 9 billions of those 12 billions have been "lost". Yup. Lost. That's official stuff. So the $200m of the Lazarus group, compared to $9 billion in $100 USD bills: cry me a river.
- SapporoChris 2y ago
  Do you have a source for 'My favorite is the US loading a 747 with 12 billions in bills of $100 USD to "help the reconstruction of Iraq" and officially 9 billions of those 12 billions have been "lost".' Your numbers seem a bit off, but it is definitely an outrageous incident. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2011-jun-13-la-fg-missing-billions-20110613-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2011-jun-13-la-fg-mi... "This month, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government are finally closing the books on the program that handled all those Benjamins. But despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash — enough to run the Los Angeles Unified School District or the Chicago Public Schools for a year, among many other things."
- csomar 2y ago
  > So the $200m of the Lazarus group, compared to $9 billion in $100 USD bills: cry me a river. I don't think the US cares about a $200m, whatever that $200m belong to. Their issue is that this money is enabling a regime they want to see inert (since the nuclear shield means that the DPRK is not going anywhere anytime soon).
loceng 2y ago
BOOK TO READ: Wilful Blindness: How a network of narcos, tycoons and CCP agents infiltrated the West by Sam Cooper - an investigative Canadian journalist, to get a deep dive into how long this has been going on. This current government in power [9 years now; the Trudeau Liberal-NDP majority voting power coalition] has done nothing but to allow rampant fraud including this to continue; Trudeau himself on video has stated he admires China's basic dictatorship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8FuHuUhNZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8FuHuUhNZ0
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
The problem with "money laundering" is that its theory and its operation are the inverse of one another. The theory is supposed to be that you make it illegal to conceal the source of money that is the proceeds of a crime, so you can prosecute criminals for money laundering even if you couldn't prove the original crime. Which, to begin with, is pretty sus. Basically an attempt to end run around the government satisfying its burden of proof for the underlying crime. But that also doesn't work. The criminals just set up a legitimate business as a front, claim the money came from there and the only way to prove otherwise is to uncover the original crime. So in practice money laundering is overwhelmingly charged in one of two cases. One, they already proved the original crime and tack on a money laundering charge which is pointlessly redundant because those criminals were already caught. Two, you get some innocent people who -- unlike career criminals -- don't understand how money laundering laws work, so even though they were doing nothing wrong, they do something which is technically money laundering (because the rules criminalize innocuous and common behavior), or trigger the false positive AI nonsense, and then get charged with money laundering or booted out of the banking system. Meanwhile large criminal organizations know how to make their transactions look like innocent transactions and then the government yells at banks for not catching them, even though the banks have no real way to do that because the criminal organizations made their transactions look like innocent transactions. This is a dumb law that does more harm than good. Just get rid of it and charge the criminals with their actual crimes.

mulmen 2y ago

Is there any reason to believe the Australian investment is related to money laundering or drug sales?

averageRoyalty 2y ago
No. The linked article admits they're wildly guessing and links to another report with recommendations but no numbers I saw from a skim. I hear this repeated regularly on HN but am yet to see a reliable source beyond "but it's Chinese money".
Garvi 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- shakna 2y ago
  No. Australia's national money laundering assessment [0] is not virtue signalling as a cover for racism. There's a history of money laundering for terrorism, child exploitation, slavery, and drug trafficking. There's also a history of arrests, and government task force projects to try and change that. [0] https://www.austrac.gov.au/business/how-comply-guidance-and-resources/guidance-resources/money-laundering-australia-national-risk-assessment-2024 https://www.austrac.gov.au/business/how-comply-guidance-and-...
  - zaphirplane 2y ago
    My interpretation is that the parent is referring to the link between Chinese realestate buyers in Australia and criminal activity. It’s almost subliminal how the conversation shifted
  - jimz 2y ago
    There was also the "white Australia policy" though. And China is the perfect scapegoat, like NK, since they seldom make public statements, and when they do, the west tend to treat it as across the board false. But the top Area Studies scholars are not working for the government. I hang out in quite a few Chinese telegram chats (mostly sysadmins and just bullshitting - the term translates well literally but carries a slightly different connotation in that it's not falsity per se but bragging/exaggeration OR falsity, depending on context). There's a pretty general sense of neo-imperialistic motives on the part of the west and it's hard to blame them considering that for a nation that wasn't annexed it effectively had very little to no say in the administration of various parts of its territories for 160 years. Whether out of arrogance or because there's a huge blind spot (or both), this has led to missing out on numerous opportunities in effectively gain leverage on the CCP in significant ways, like getting rid of the quota system for H1-B visas so those who were on F-1s and graduate can actually stay and work in the US, or give general asylum to the protestors against the Chinese takeover of HK, a cohort that is educated, have relevant skills, speaks English, and compared to the rest of China, are relatively wealthy. The official fear of a brain drain have been around since the 1880s - the Chinese Exclusion Act was the preferred policy of both the US and Chinese governments, one that helped nobody and legitimized racism parallel to Jim Crow. One would think that we'd be over that by now. There's some chatter that there's a soft-coup since Xi haven't been leading the nightly 30 minutes of propaganda, probably for the first time since the 1980s the news, broadcast nationally, didn't lead off with some inane report of leadership meeting dignitaries. The truth is anybody's guess but an actual military coup is unlikely to occur after the Lin Biao incident. The fact that America doesn't even seem to be aware of this is telling, and in North Korea's case, even more amplified. Also, a nation-state cannot by definite launder any money since money laundering is only a thing because the state wants its cut. But here, by their theory, all of the money is going to the nation-state so... what laundering are they talking about? Theft, perhaps. Expropriation? Sure. But laundering? That makes no sense unless you internalize that America or whoever is actually the world's policeman. Good luck with maintaining credibility with that outlook.
shakna 2y ago
The FATF report goes into it in more detail [0], but to put it very simply - Australia doesn't have the protections it should, when it comes to money laundering. [0] https://www.fatf-gafi.org/content/dam/fatf-gafi/mer/Mutual-Evaluation-Report-Australia-2015.pdf https://www.fatf-gafi.org/content/dam/fatf-gafi/mer/Mutual-E...
phyalow 2y ago
In my empirical experience, its more to do with stashing the proceeds of state capture by politically connected individuals in China.

__turbobrew__ 2y ago

Another reason why we should only allow Canadian nationals to own real estate in Canada.

ClumsyPilot 2y ago
What about shell companies? Corporations are people too!
- yunohn 2y ago
  Governments will never remove that - it’s a super important construct to allow everyone except the average citizens to avoid all sorts of taxes.
- givemeethekeys 2y ago
  Thats an easy fix: Only Canadian shell companies can own real estate in Canada! =)
pjkundert 2y ago
Or, you know… build more houses. We could drop western Europe into central BC / Alberta/ Sask. / Manitoba and not notice. Or, we could destroy our small builders, import millions of immigrants incapable of construction / trade work, inflate asset prices, pay for their housing with government grants, lie about CPI inflation, and fix it all if we just… “only allow Canadian nationals to own real estate”?
- __turbobrew__ 2y ago
  There are many things which could be done. I think ideologically it makes sense that if you want to own land in a country you need to be a citizen of that country. You need “skin in the game” so to speak, if you want to enjoy owning property in a location you need to make a commitment to that nation — the good parts and the bad parts.

endgame 2y ago

> Australia Don't worry, Australia's going to fix that! By making "harming public confidence in the banking system or financial markets" "serious harm" under the upcoming Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024. And by "fix", I mean "suppress discussion about", of course.

CoastalCoder 2y ago
There's no shortage of things to complain about regarding the U.S., but its First Amendment is pretty great IMHO.
- tryauuum 2y ago
  I wanted to comment that any country has something about freedom of speech in their constitution, the problem is usually that the government doesn't respect its own law. But when I went to compare american and russian constitutions and if you only judge the text, the us is worded better. In russian it's simply "freedom of speech is guaranteed to anyone" while in the us it's more specific about not creating new laws harming freedom of speech.
  - walterbell 2y ago
    > not creating new laws harming freedom of speech Tests are helpful, when writing rules. US freedom of speech has been influenced by law on asymmetry of economic resources in groups vs. individuals [2010], allowing state propaganda in domestic media [2012], and gov-corp coordination of social media moderation [2024]. [2010]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_(organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_(organization) [2012]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act [2024]https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/justices-side-with-biden-over-governments-influence-on-social-media-content-moderation/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/justices-side-with-biden-...
  - amy-petrik-214 2y ago
    It was once said by a famous african dictator: “There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.” ― Forest Whitaker So maybe it is like this. It's a funny thing to say, because in this mindset there is freedom literally to do anything. Consequences come after, minutes, hours, days, years, but after and not before, at least not until OpenAI-Google's new "PrescientCrimeCAItcher" comes online. These "community guidelines" are quite frustrating because a major communication modality presently does not have freedom of speech, it has removal of speech it does not like. So that's an interesting loophole legalese-wise. Presently these are private sector companies running addicting entertaining boards from which they serve ads for profit. If these are instead made to be "utilities" like power or water, utilities of communication, I would imagine the calculus would change

TacticalCoder 2y ago

> DoJ investigation found.. [banking] business had been used to launder more than $650m between 2016 and 2021 from US fentanyl sales for Chinese crime groups and drug traffickers. According to the official CIA "world factbook" or whatever that is called: an estimated 3% to 5% of the world's fucking entire GDP is linked to criminal activities. Blockchains are cool in that they allow to follow the laundering (so it allows for nice blog entries with good looking graphs, which I do appreciate), as opposed to traditional banks where it's all opaque. But the amount of money laundered using cryptocurrencies is a drop in the bucket compared to size of criminal activities ongoing in the world (btw criminal activities predates blockchain by centuries or millenia). And don't get me started on the missing billions when "aid" is sent to this and that country. Be it Ukraine or Haiti or whatever: there are corrupt officials and individuals at every single step of the ladder. My favorite is the US loading a 747 with 12 billions in bills of $100 USD to "help the reconstruction of Iraq" and officially 9 billions of those 12 billions have been "lost". Yup. Lost. That's official stuff. So the $200m of the Lazarus group, compared to $9 billion in $100 USD bills: cry me a river.

SapporoChris 2y ago
Do you have a source for 'My favorite is the US loading a 747 with 12 billions in bills of $100 USD to "help the reconstruction of Iraq" and officially 9 billions of those 12 billions have been "lost".' Your numbers seem a bit off, but it is definitely an outrageous incident. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2011-jun-13-la-fg-missing-billions-20110613-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2011-jun-13-la-fg-mi... "This month, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government are finally closing the books on the program that handled all those Benjamins. But despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash — enough to run the Los Angeles Unified School District or the Chicago Public Schools for a year, among many other things."
csomar 2y ago
> So the $200m of the Lazarus group, compared to $9 billion in $100 USD bills: cry me a river. I don't think the US cares about a $200m, whatever that $200m belong to. Their issue is that this money is enabling a regime they want to see inert (since the nuclear shield means that the DPRK is not going anywhere anytime soon).

loceng 2y ago

BOOK TO READ: Wilful Blindness: How a network of narcos, tycoons and CCP agents infiltrated the West by Sam Cooper - an investigative Canadian journalist, to get a deep dive into how long this has been going on. This current government in power [9 years now; the Trudeau Liberal-NDP majority voting power coalition] has done nothing but to allow rampant fraud including this to continue; Trudeau himself on video has stated he admires China's basic dictatorship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8FuHuUhNZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8FuHuUhNZ0

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

The problem with "money laundering" is that its theory and its operation are the inverse of one another. The theory is supposed to be that you make it illegal to conceal the source of money that is the proceeds of a crime, so you can prosecute criminals for money laundering even if you couldn't prove the original crime. Which, to begin with, is pretty sus. Basically an attempt to end run around the government satisfying its burden of proof for the underlying crime. But that also doesn't work. The criminals just set up a legitimate business as a front, claim the money came from there and the only way to prove otherwise is to uncover the original crime. So in practice money laundering is overwhelmingly charged in one of two cases. One, they already proved the original crime and tack on a money laundering charge which is pointlessly redundant because those criminals were already caught. Two, you get some innocent people who -- unlike career criminals -- don't understand how money laundering laws work, so even though they were doing nothing wrong, they do something which is technically money laundering (because the rules criminalize innocuous and common behavior), or trigger the false positive AI nonsense, and then get charged with money laundering or booted out of the banking system. Meanwhile large criminal organizations know how to make their transactions look like innocent transactions and then the government yells at banks for not catching them, even though the banks have no real way to do that because the criminal organizations made their transactions look like innocent transactions. This is a dumb law that does more harm than good. Just get rid of it and charge the criminals with their actual crimes.