This is where scammers "invest" the hot money. Canada's open arms embraces immigrants...if they have money.

vancouversun.com/[...]

it's old news.

and ... good riddance.

The Anbang case is a new variation. It shows how some cities have fallen over backwards for the big corporate investments, and their due diligence has been shown to be inadequate. This is one of the downsides of Canada not having federal systems for this. Many provinces have their own way of doing things, and some think that they have little to learn from other provinces. Hopefully the lessons from this case will be taken on board across Canada.
I would hope that there is a case for compensation if the small investors can start a class action against the city governments concerned.

It is easy to say good riddance. Easy to forget that a lot of that 1bn comes out of peoples pension schemes, and a lot of the small investors were not corporate fat cats, and in many cases ordinary people, including Canadians. Not the nouveaux riche with dirty slush money to hide.

Scumbags do these things.

Canada had a long history of sheltering money extorted from China. It was a major money laundering country for corrupt Chinese companies and government officials - hence the utter implosion of Nortel. The article shows that Canada has taken a potentially more responsible attitude to it's former policy of money laundering.

@michael: Good so far. But these are people who want their excessive wealth protected, whether earned legally or illegally, as it is in many places.

having been a teacher for many years in china I am not a 1 percenter. my wealth is not excessive, but like most sensible people i have some invested and i want to protect it, as its me pension and safety net. if you have any kind of savings or pencsion plan, it is invested for you. noone should bne complacent and thinking it is only the uber rich this sort of stuff affects. if you have any kind of insurance, you are affected too, as the insurance company invests some of your premiums, if they earn less money, premiums go up. its all connected in this big bad global capitalism model.

I don't quite understand the problem. So Anbang received life insurance premiums which need to be invested and diversified a part of the investment in an international portfolio. Isn't that what you're supposed to do? Where is the scam?

Canada sheltering foreign criminals and exploiting newly arrived immigrants with promises of riches to keep the pension system solvent? Say it ain't so.