US tops ranking of real estate destinations for dirty money

The US is the world’s top destination for laundering dirty money through real estate, the latest update to the Financial Secrecy Index revealed today.¹ Weak to non-existent transparency laws earned the US the worst possible score on the Index’s real estate ownership indicator, with fellow World Cup hosts Canada and Mexico close behind it in second and fifth in the ranking of dirty money real estate destinations.

The UK ranked 8th as it prepares to host a global summit to tackle illicit finance later this year, within which real estate ownership transparency is expected to be a key element.²

Alongside the Trump administration’s gutting of the US tax authority and finance regulators, the US’s rolling out of the red carpet to organised crime, sanctions-evaders and oligarchs is a threat both to the US itself and to countries around the world, the Tax Justice Network warns.

Alex Cobham, chief executive at the Tax Justice Network, said:

“When you’re Zillow for money launderers, you’re dealing with a more extreme side of money laundering. It’s not paintings or cryptocurrency being bought up by drug traffickers and corrupt oligarchs, it’s the apartment building you’re renting in, the office building next door, the mall you take your kids to. It’s the land, the bricks and steel that make up your country. There’s no point pretending to wage a war on drugs if you’re letting the bosses buy beach-front condos to rent out and finance their trafficking with.”

Moran Harari, Index Lead at the Tax Justice Network, said:

“You can only do so much about drug traffickers and corrupt oligarchs when the world’s biggest economy has no qualms about letting them buy up beach-front condos with their dirty money to rent out and finance their operations with.

“The open arms to dirty money in US real estate is part of a wider nose-dive into extreme wealth anarchy. Our earlier research showed that Trump’s Tax Cuts and No-Jobs Act doubled US multinational corporations’ profit shifting pace, making them responsible for almost a third of all countries’ losses to corporate tax abuse, as they make more profit and pay even less US tax with no extra jobs or investment for the US in return.³ There’s wide consensus⁴ from economists and millionaires alike that extreme wealth is a threat to democracy, and the US is rapidly dismantling the meagre guardrails it has against it, with risks to other countries.”

Florencia Lorenzo, Senior Research Advocate at the Tax Justice Network, said:

“Countries watching this superpower implode under the weight of its billionaire-class are understandably recalibrating their security, trade and diplomatic relationships with the US. Tax is a big part of that recalibration, and most countries are ushering in a better way of negotiating tax at the UN, where the US can’t block them.⁵ The EU is the hold-out, insisting on doing things the old way outside of the UN and appeasing Trump. Where that got them to this year is exempting US companies from the global minimum tax that they spent years working on, and in return Trump threatened to invade Greenland.⁶ Our research shows that EU countries are losing out twice to the US, by exempting US multinationals from the global minimum tax to appease Trump, and by being exposed to the US rolling out the red carpet to the world’s money launderers. Europe needs to make protecting its tax sovereignty a part of the Atlantic recalibration, and the best way for doing so today is to join the rest of the world in backing the UN tax convention.”

In addition to the full Financial Secrecy Index, the Tax Justice Network has this year calculated a specific sub-index for real estate secrecy. The sub-index ranks countries according to the risk posed by their failure to adopt real estate transparency rules, weighted against the size of their domestic real estate market⁷. The top 15 jurisdictions for dirty money realty in 2026 are:

1. United States
2. Canada
3. Australia
4. India
5. Mexico
6. Indonesia
7. United Arab Emirates
8. United Kingdom
9. Italy
10. Malaysia
11. Switzerland
12. Saudi Arabia
13. Sri Lanka
14. Türkiye
15. Chile

The findings are part of the latest rolling update to the Tax Justice Network’s Financial Secrecy Index, which is a wider ranking of countries most complicit in helping individuals hide their finances from the rule of law. The latest update focuses on real estate ownership and golden visas, and provides an additional separate ranking on dirty money in real estate in particular. The assessment of real estate transparency reflects the general availability of ownership data for immoveable property in each jurisdiction, as well as the ability of foreign companies and other legal vehicles like trusts to hold local property while keeping the beneficial owners of the real estate anonymous.

The latest release also brings an update to the Index’s golden visas indicator.⁸ The assessment of countries’ golden visa practices confirms that a sizeable group of countries continues to offer citizenship or residency by investment programs without the levying of personal income tax, a combination known to trigger tax evasion and money laundering risks.

The Financial Secrecy Index’s data is used by the IMF, World Bank, OECD, European Commission, FBI and Five Eyes intelligence alliance, and over 100 academic institutions, as well as by a growing number of financial institutions for anti-money laundering geographic risk assessment.

-ENDS-

Notes to editor

1. The latest update to the Financial Secrecy Index is available here. Alongside the traditional Financial Secrecy Index ranking, we’ve published an additional ranking – the Real Estate Secrecy Index – focused specifically on real estate ownership transparency.
2. More information about the summit is available here. The UK government’s Anti-Corruption Champion, Baroness Hodge, is currently preparing a detailed report on the transparency of asset ownership including real estate, as the government prepares to push back against the damage done by allowing anonymity.
3. See our State of Tax Justice 2025 report.
4. A G20 report co-authored by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz concluded that the rise of extreme wealth is a “threat to democracy”. Oxfam found that over half of millionaires polled in G20 countries think extreme wealth is a “threat to democracy”.
5. Read more about the UN tax convention negotiations here.
6. Read more about the “side-by-side” exemption given to the US on the global minimum tax proposal here. The exemption means EU countries will keep losing 5 times Greenland’s GDP to tax cheating US companies every year.
7. The Real Estate Secrecy Index ranking weights countries’ scores on the real estate ownership indicator against the size of their domestic real estate market to arrive at the risk each country poses for money laundering in real estate. The indicator assesses three main components: first, whether authorities have access to real estate ownership information through centralised and digitalised real estate records. Second, whether information on the ownership of local real estate is accessible to the public online, including whether access is limited by legal barriers, such as legitimate-interest requirements; administrative or technical barriers, such as citizen-only portals; or economic barriers, such as high access fees. Third, whether jurisdictions require foreign companies and other legal vehicles (eg trusts) that own or acquire local real estate to register their beneficial ownership information. The size of countries’ domestic real estate market is sourced from the publicly available Real Estate Index, which provides the absolute commercial real estate market size of countries and is published by the European Public Real Estate Association.
8. Read our blog on the golden visa indicator here.