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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsUS Expands its Money Laundering Probe into the Real Estate Market
US authorities are ramping up their money laundering investigations and will be looking into luxury real estate after they found that potentially illicit activity is behind more than 30% of cash purchases, media reported Thursday.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) - a bureau of the U.S. Department of Treasury is extending and expanding a temporary initiative, the Geographic Targeting Orders (GTOs), that requires title insurance companies todetermine and reportthe actual owners of shell companies buying high-end real estate in several metropolitan areas.
Launched in January 2016, the program was designed to increase scrutiny in a field that is particularly vulnerable to money laundering.
It initially targeted the purchase of real estate for cash in Manhattan and Miami but was then extended to cover also New York City, two more counties in the Miami area, five counties in California, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego, as well as Bexar county in Texas that includes San Antonio.
https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/6911-us-expands-its-money-laundering-probe-into-the-real-estate-market
Sanity Claws
(21,852 posts)The increase of luxury housing has caused the loss of affordable housing and contributed to the rise of homelessness.
haveahart
(905 posts)8 months. Shoddy looking ex- and interior. They can only be built to launder money. They look like shit and begin at $750,000.00. Built one on top of the other. Looks like low-income housing project but it isn't. Don't know what the County Commissioners were thinking when they allowed this development in an already crowded area. They literally sap the air out of the neighborhood. Visited the sales office. Russians...I kid you not.
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,817 posts)sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)This program should have a much wider scale.