Friday, September 9, 2016

From Liechtenstein To Panama: The Era Of The Leak

Balance due?
Last April, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists revealed the "Panama Papers" scandal, a database of 11.5 million documents leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

The leak permits to identify more than 200,000 offshore entities, from over 200 countries, including Canada. Many Canadians were among the names found in the leaked papers, including the Royal Bank of Canada, which has referred over 370 clients to the Panamanian law firm.

The Canada Revenue Agency said it obtained the leaked data and is cross-referencing this information with their own data. Since then, CRA went totally silent.. The opaque silence from the CRA is raising a lot of questions: We know that about 350 Canadians are involved, but how many are under investigation? For what irregularities are they being investigated? Will there be penalties assessed? Will there be prosecutions?

That's the problem with the secretive way the CRA works. Not only don't we have the answer to these questions, but there is little likelihood that we'll ever will.

The ''Panama Papers'' are only one of many leaks in the past eight years, that provided previously unknown insights on the workings of offshore tax havens and the scope of the problem.  (more...)


Related:

Cayman Islands: Your tax buddy

No comments:

Post a Comment