October 3, 2016
In 2006, the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) identified 9,528 suspicious commercial real estate transactions in the U.S. in a 10-year period starting in 1996. While the agency didn’t release statistics for New York City and did not return multiple requests for comment for this story, it found that suspicious activity had tripled in the next five years leading up to 2011. Half of those cases came from just five states: New York, California, Florida, Georgia and Illinois.
“It’s a systemic issue,” said Nuri Katz of Apex Capital, a Montreal-based firm that helps foreign investors get citizenship in other countries and has helped Russian investors place their money in U.S. real estate.