A Senate hearing has heard how illegal financial gains from overseas are being pumped into the Australian property market, driving up house prices across the country. “Australia has become the destination of choice for illicit financial flows … which too often end up in the property market,” Serena Lillywhite, the CEO of Transparency International Australia, told a Senate inquiry on Tuesday. “It can reasonably be argued that it is driving up property prices in Australia and locking Australians out of owning their own home.” She said that international criminals have been using family members or other third parties with no criminal record to buy property in their names in Australia. Money laundering into Australia’s property market comes from countries as far afield as Sudan, China, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and Russia, according to Lillywhite. “It also shows that money laundering is linked to a variety of people, Sudanese generals, Malaysian bankers, PNGs political elite, and …