An ex-Wall Street short seller’s drastic advice for saving Vancouver’s economy — and itself

Seize assets. Prosecute. Pay whistleblowers.

Those are just a few recommendations Marc Cohodes has to save Vancouver’s economy.

Cohodes is a high profile short-seller and fraud-hunter who earned his reputation finding hidden problems and inflated profits on Wall Street.

Lately, though, he’s turned his attention to B.C.

Cohodes admits he’s friends with B.C. Attorney General David Eby, who last September hired former deputy commissioner of the RCMP Peter German to conduct an investigation into the province’s money laundering problem.

Reports of criminal activity started surfacing a decade ago.

While this week’s report by the B.C. government – bluntly titled Dirty Money — links money laundering to B.C.’s opioid overdose and real estate crises, it doesn’t explain why the previous government, under BC Liberal leader Christy Clark, wasn’t able to stop it.

“I think [Eby] should prosecute and investigative people who fueled this, people who profited from it on the backs of hardworking B.C.-ers,” he said.

But Cohodes goes even further with a proposed fix:

“I think the B.C. government needs to seize assets, sell the assets at an auction, split half the money with the Chinese government, split half the money with B.C. and give the whistleblower or finder, say, 10 per cent.”

“You have to do drastic things and drastic measures need to be taken so asset seizure is one place to really start.”

Cohodes takes issue with the finding in Dirty Money that only $100 million has been illegally funneled through B.C. casinos.

“The numbers in my mind are in the tens of billions of dollars and I think the reasons those numbers don’t come out is because the government doesn’t want to scare the hell out of people,” he said.

He’s recommended to Eby that authorities reward whistleblowers who tip off the government to drug trades or luxury home and car ownership.

While he says the problem can be fixed, it won’t stop Vancouver’s real estate bubble from bursting. In his view, the market is already essentially frozen.

“The sooner it resets and resets severely, where hard working B.C.-ers who are born here and want to live here, want to own a place, the better everyone is,” Cohodes says.

“Real estate collapsing is a long term plus, but short term it’s gonna be a b****.”

His final recommendation is that people stand behind Eby to brace the blow.

The attorney general, he believes, is a shining example of what needs to be done to crack down on money laundering.