“Greater Vancouver has acted as a laundromat for foreign organized crime, including a Mexican cartel, Iranian and Mainland Chinese organized crime.”**********
Vancouver penthouses, ski chalets at Whistler, and holiday retreats in the Gulf Islands are among the thousands of properties identified in a dirty money probe that estimates more than $7 billion was laundered through the western Canadian province of British Columbia last year.
In the Vancouver region, housing prices rose more than 70 per cent in five years.
“The amount of money being laundered in B.C. is more than anyone predicted,” Finance Minister Carole James told reporters.
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In the words of a former Liberal Immigration Minister, it's also "a strong industry" with "lots of customers"...
"We have 600 crystal meth users in the [1200 member] community now. We know every one of them, we know them by name, and many of them are our own family members and cousins and extended family."