CanadianCountry said:
Torontosm,
Do you have a source of the information on mortgage default being a criminal offence in middle east.
Obviously it varies by country -- but I believe this is generally true. When Dubai's economy hit the skids a few years back, I remember reading stories of Westerners who couldn't make their car payments going to jail, or being unable to get permission to leave the country. A lot of broke expatriates fled the country secretly, and their cars clogged the airport parking lot.
However -- CIC normally judges criminality by Canadian criteria. Normally that works against applicants, who find that a simple drunk driving conviction, a minor affair in Thailand or Russia, is a serious matter, here. For instance, blasphemy, sodomy, and witchcraft are also real crimes in a lot of backwards places, like Alabama or Saudi Arabia -- but I believe that if you were accused of blasphemy in one of those places CIC would not care. Being accused of lese majesty in Thailand (worthy of up to 15 years in jail), will not result in Canada looking at you twice. I don't think that having your debt criminalized will matter to CIC. If, however, the money you owe is a result of a fraud conviction, that might be different.
Of course the observation that it's best to be up front is always true.
And of course, everything I've written here is speculative. There will be times that CIC cares, and times that it doesn't -- a good lawyer would be the only way for your friend to deal with this, or put their mind at ease.
