finance

Canada Now Requires Companies to Disclose Who Benefits

- Adam Clare

Following similar legislation in other countries Canada has finally introduced a beneficial ownership requirement on Canadian companies. Federally registered companies will have to disclose who owns them, which means it’ll be harder to commit tax fraud. Plus, by having companies reveal who benefits from their existence it will be easier for authorities to track criminal behaviour and efforts around snow washing.

In 2017, an investigation by the Toronto Star and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, based on ICIJ’s Panama Papers dataset, revealed how Canada had emerged as a popular tax haven, touted by corporate service providers as a “reputable” destination to hide wealth.

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Transparency advocates welcomed the landmark reforms, which passed into law on Nov. 2 under an amendment to the Canada Business Corporations Act, following a years-long push for a legislative means to tackle money laundering and tax evasion.

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How Banks Destroy Your Future, And What You Can do About It

- Adam Clare

Money makes the world go round, but it can also make the world go burn. If you care about the planet, the people on it, or just life in general then you probably don’t want your investments to destroy what you care about. Investment funds that claim to protect the environment and it’s important to ensure that they actually do what they claim, and there are organizations that check that. As a consumer you can talk to your bank or financial advisor about this to bring more awareness to your concerns.

[#1] Blast the banks on socials.
Big banks are incredibly worried about their reputations, and they’re extra sensitive during their annual shareholder meetings. Those happen to be happening right now, so fire up those accounts and get to blastin’ about it.

[#2] Switch your bank.
If you don’t want your money being lent to fossil fuel companies, switch to a bank that won’t do that. There are a bunch of full service, FDIC-insured banking options out there to choose from.

[#3] Go outside and get loud!
Put on some pants, walk outside, and get loud about how absolutely f%&ed it is that banks are still lending to the fossil fuel sector.

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Canadians Need to Know Snow-washing

- Adam Clare

Us Canadians need to live up to the stereotype that we are a nice, peaceful, and safe country. Clearly the so-called trucker protest tarnished our reputation, but in financial circles our reputation is tarnished thanks to our neglect of corporate accountability. Internationally Canada is seen as a great place to launder illegal obtained funds akin to third world tax havens. Laundering money in Canada is known as snow-washing.

Thanks to excellent research to Transparency International Canada (and more organizations) we finally know the extent of snow-washing. In order to address the problem we must first understand it. So let’s hope Canadian politicians step up to fight this corporate corruption in our government.

Although Canada has vowed to establish a publicly accessible corporate beneficial ownership registry, a database that will store details about who ultimately owns and controls millions of private companies, it won’t be operational until at least 2025.

“Open data allows journalists, civil society and other stakeholders to investigate wrongdoing,” the report says. “This is particularly important for Canada, where law enforcement and regulatory authorities have limited capacity to investigate domestic crime, let alone criminal activity beyond our borders.”

As an example, one of the report’s case studies about a Russian transnational laundromat builds on previous reporting by investigative journalists, including The Globe’s Mark MacKinnon.

For far too long, Canada has been saddled with a reputation as an international haven for financial crime. As the report rightly argues, transparency is the only antidote.

Read more.

Read the snow-washing report.

Thanks to Delaney!

Pandora Papers Resonate in Canada

- Adam Clare

The Pandora Papers were released just last week and they are already having in impact in Canada. The non-profit Canadians for Tax Fairness is pushing the recently elected politicians to get on closing loopholes and exploits that only the rich get to use. All parties support tax reform to address the growing wealth divide in the country, and with the Pandora leak the need for tax reform is clear. Two Canadian celebrity athletes were exposed in the financial papers leak, which has hurt their reputations.

Support for tax fairness in Canada appears overwhelming. Eighty-nine per cent of Canadians want to see a wealth tax of one per cent paid by the richest Canadians as part of the country’s pandemic recovery, according to a recent Abacus Data pollbased on the NDP’s 2021 platform, and 92 per cent support closing tax loopholes and making it harder for corporations to strategically book profits in tax havens.

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“There seems to be universal acknowledgment across the parties that economic inequality is a problem, and it’s a problem that requires government action,” said Cochrane.

In a blog post for C4TF, Cochrane outlined policies the major parties could work together on, based on similarities between party platforms, and identified an excess profits tax as one possibility.

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Opening A Pandora’s Box of Elite Financial Trickery

- Adam Clare
money

Yesterday the Pandora Papers were released to the public by a team of investigative journalists. It exposed how 35 world leaders and 300 other public officials used complex financial arrangements to not pay taxes and avoid potential corruption charges. While the rest of us get in trouble for not paying taxes, the elite continue to eschew taxes by using offshore accounts and a constant movement of money only the wealthy can afford.

It’s important to expose this behaviour of the rich to show they aren’t above the law nor can the mooch off the rest of us by using services our taxes provide while not paying their share. What’s more, it’s the elite who contribute the most to climate change yet they hog all the money to solve the issue.

Let’s keep looking into their financial management.

Much like the Panama Papers leak in 2016 or the Paradise Papers the following year, the secret files provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse at how certain global elites — or in other cases, high-profile criminals — take advantage of financial wizardry or opaque corporate structures to either shield assets, wriggle out of their tax obligations, or hide wealth entirely.  

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“When we published the Panama Papers a few years ago, there was a lot of outcry around the world saying that this was a system that needed to end,” said Gerard Ryle, the ICIJ’s director. “But we’re now seeing the very people who could end the system … themselves benefiting from it.” 

Read more.

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