Quote:
Originally Posted by bob
Please explain
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There's very little oversight in real estate and you don't have to go through the traditional financial channels. You can hide ownership through foreign companies and trusts. And most importantly, you can pay in cash.
Since real estate has become a safe investment (in the long run) and is a high ticket item, it's a perfect place to stash your money. Bank accounts and the stock market have oversight and draws attention. Owning millions million in real estate in different states through a number of shell companies and trusts is hard to detect.
Washing the money is the other side of it. So lets say you buy a $5 million building in cash. You can then use other dirty cash to put another $5 million in upgrades. The general contractor and electrician doesn't care where that money came from and no one is looking into it. Sell that building for $10 million in a few years and you've just cleaned $10 million.
Then you have renting as a tool. Take a 50 unit building and rent it out. Every dime coming through from tenants is clean. And if you have a few empty units in the building, who cares? Just say they are being rented and the tenant pays cash.
It's so popular that it's probably the reason we'll never go after the Russian oligarchs no matter what they do in Ukraine. It would crash the Manhattan (and other wealthy areas) real estate market overnight. Heck, our last President made his fortune as a laundromat for money launderers. Cleaning dirty foreign money is an American pastime.