MONEY LAUNDERING IN BC's RENT/LEASE MARKET

   Vancouver Sun:  Christine Duhaime, an anti-money laundering expert and lawyer, said leases or rental properties could be misused through “trade-based money laundering — where you inflate the price to get a fake invoice to then move money.”
   For example, if a property rented for $10,000 a month, the landlord could actually put twice that amount into the bank as the rent, effectively laundering $10,000.
   “There is no record in the sense that it is just a private contract between you and the landlord so nobody really knows who lives in what space or how much you are paying for rent,” Duhaime said. “If you are going to fabricate the prices of things, it is really hard to detect that the money was not legitimately earned.”
   Unlike real estate agents, those involved in property leasing are not required to report suspicious transactions to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, better known as Fintrac.