Crime
Organised crime and armoured cars of cash: The dirty money pushing up Australian house prices
Australia trails Russia in keeping money launderers out of real estate, according to new research, as long-delayed reforms are finally due to take effect from mid-next year.
They looked like any other couple at the auction. But the Russians had a secret.
Calm behind their dark sunglasses, they pushed the price higher and higher. The waterfront home they were bidding on that day was just one property in a sprawling multimillion-dollar portfolio the pair had quietly snapped up since arriving in Australia. And all of it was paid for with laundered cash, police allege – a money trail international investigators have since linked to bank embezzlement and waste dumping scandals back home in Russia.
Real estate agents who worked with the Russian couple, helping them buy and then rent out the glitzy homes for thousands of dollars a week, told this masthead nothing seemed amiss. Buyers ringing in bids from unknown locations might raise alarm bells, even after the strange days of the pandemic normalised remote auctions, but this couple was there willing to sign a contract. “We don’t have to ask any other questions,” one realtor said.
Just two years later, in 2024, the couple were rounded up in police raids, charged with laundering money through Queensland real estate and ATMs across Victoria and NSW. They have not been convicted and are on bail fighting the charges in Queensland courts.
Australia has fallen behind Russia and the rest of the developed world in efforts to keep money launderers out of real estate, according to new research.
While some reforms are due to take effect from mid-next year, experts say the dirty money has already pushed up house prices as criminals swoop on mansions and luxury apartments, and more needs to be done to catch them.
The major agencies told a senate inquiry in 2021 that tens of billions of dollars were laundered through Australian property every year and regulatory sources, not authorised to speak publicly about more recent data, said the scale of the problem had not improved as the country grapples with a housing crisis.
Criminal syndicates from Russia to China are hiding proceeds of crimes offshore in Australia, even with recent changes requiring more foreign asset disclosures. And home-grown crooks, such as the drug trafficking empire of Melbourne gangland boss George Marrogi, have also turned to real estate – including prime land for development – as they look to “wash” dirty cash by moving it through the financial system until it cannot be traced to crime.
Australia sits at the very bottom of a new ranking by Transparency International and the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, which for the first time examined both anti-money laundering regulations and the data collected on property buyers in some of the biggest economies in the world.
Russia (where, like Australia, you can buy property with bundles of physical cash) ranked 15th out of the 24 countries assessed, also ahead of the United States. South Africa came in first place, after recent reforms.
No country got perfect marks, with much of the world’s real estate still “shockingly exposed” to criminal syndicates, the report found.
Transparency International’s chief in Australia, Clancy Moore, said Australia’s comparatively weak laws and booming property market make it a “magnet for organised crime gangs to wash their dirty money”, even more desirable than global hotspots like the UK’s “Londongrad”.
That is pushing up housing prices locally, Moore says, “shutting out ordinary Australians from the dream of owning a home”.
Australia is one of just a handful of countries (alongside Haiti and Madagascar) where “gatekeeper” professions such as real estate agents, lawyers and accountants are still exempt from important anti-money laundering laws. Unlike banks and casinos, they don’t have to do due diligence checks on customers or report suspicious transactions.
That’s about to change here, nearly two decades after Australia first promised to close the loophole. The Albanese government’s crackdown on real estate (and other gatekeeper industries) comes into force from July 2026, despite opposition from the Coalition. But Moore warns that still leaves a “long window for exploitation”.
Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus told this masthead the reforms were long overdue. “Hardworking Australians should not have to compete in the housing market against criminals with their dirty cash,” he said.
The real estate lobby argues it is impossible to estimate how far that tide of illicit money pushes up house prices. But economists and realtors report that sales through companies or buyers’ advocates hiding criminal buyers are likely having an impact on local prices, as research tracking the same problem in Europe and Canada has found.
AMP chief economist Shane Oliver says he is surprised more hasn’t been done already to address the impact of organised crime on Australian house prices.
At the higher end of the market, where fewer homes are for sale (and wealthy clients often value discretion), bids above market value can have bigger ripple effects, pulling up entire streets.
“While most of the strength in the market comes down to ordinary Australians, to the extent nefarious activity is pushing it up, that should be investigated,” Oliver says.
The Australian Federal Police calls money laundering the lifeblood of the underworld, funding

This is a scam, so much for helping our own.
Total disregard. Who can compete with dirty money.