BC’s Public Registry to Combat Money Laundering : Broken on Arrival

When the British Columbia government announced in 2018 that it would implement a publicly accessible registry of beneficial ownership of land, hopes were high that the registry would effectivelycombat the province’s money laundering problem. However, in the ensuing months, the BC government stripped the highly touted public registry of almost all its potential power and functionality. The final product, scheduled to be launched this fall, will likely do little to stop money laundering in BC real estate. And, once again, Canada will have failed to show it is serious about combatting money laundering. Created under BC’s Land Ownership Transparency Act, the registry has significant flaws that greatly undermine its ability to help deter and detect money laundering in BC real estate. There is no proactive verification of identification information for beneficial owners, which renders that information of little value to law-enforcement agencies and other searchers of the registry. The searchability and discoverability of information filed on the registry is unreasonably restricted, which deters use and limits searchers’ ability to connect falsely declared beneficial owners with perpetrators of predicate crimes. There is no confidential tip line through which searchers from around the world can send key information and evidence to Canadian law-enforcement agencies and Canada Revenue Agency. And sanctions for false filings do not include prison sentences, the absence of which creates minimal deterrence to members of organized crime, undermines the integrity of information filed, and decreases law-enforcement agencies’ ability to negotiate plea deals in exchange for information leading to the arrest and conviction of perpetrators of predicate crimes. In other words, the information on the registry will be unreliable, difficult to access, difficult to process and, even if it helps a searcher spot a falsely declared beneficial owner, the ability to communicate that discovery to Canadian law-enforcement officials and their ability to leverage it to catch criminals will be curtailed. The good news is that these flaws can all be fixed