Please join the Harriman Institute and Columbia's Department of Urban Studies for a panel discussion on the politics of luxury real estate. Earlier this year, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that it would require the identification and tracking of purchasers of luxury real estate properties in Manhattan and Miami. The pilot reporting initiative comes in the wake of a number of investigative stories that have linked U.S. luxury real estate purchases, increasingly conducted through opaque shell companies, with facilitating transnational money laundering and kleptocracy by foreign officials and individuals under investigation in their home countries (including Russia, China and Malaysia). These new rules of disclosure issues by U.S. officials have faced fierce opposition and domestic lobbying by professional associations. This panel, co-cosponsored by Columbia University's Harriman Institute and Department of Urban Studies, brings together a prominent group of investigative journalists, academics and analysts to discuss the emerging links between international money laundering and the growth of luxury real estate markets in New York and London. How does the politics of luxury real estate and its regulation interface with transnational networks of professional service providers who seek to disembed their clients from taxation and reporting requirements in their home countries? Why have Western real estate markets received such little attention from political economists and researchers who specialize in global governance? And what are the prospects for transparency advocates and regulators to successfully institutionalize this renewed scrutiny in real estate to broader global transparency initiatives? Panelists Charles Davidson, Publisher of The American Interest magazine and Executive Director of the Kleptocracy Initiative at Hudson Institute. Michael Hudson, Senior Editor, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Ben Judah, Journalist and author of This is London Life and Death in the Wrold City Jason Sharman, Professor of Political Science at Griffith University and author of Chasing Kleptocrats' Loot The International Campaign Against Grand Corruption Moderated by Alexander Cooley, Director of the Harriman institute, Columbia University.

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