There’s a lot going on in this story, so it’s worthwhile going to read it here. In short, the Globe and Mail conducted an investigation into private lending and mortgages in BC’s hot real estate market, and found that some of those mortgages had been financed, in part, by drug traffickers. Those drug traffickers provided loans to individuals to purchase the houses, then placed a lien on the property, ensuring that even if the home buyers defaulted on the mortgage, that they would get paid.

The connection to China and the fentanyl trade is particularly interesting, particularly how the home buyers would repay the loans by moving money to the drug traffickers in China. This meant that no international transactions took place, which in turn means that few, if any, of these transactions (other than suspicious transaction reports) would be reported to FINTRAC.