Paradise Papers hit Trudeau’s fundraiser
The chief fundraiser and senior adviser to Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who played a key role in the rise to power of the politician, was involved in moving millions of dollars to offshore havens, the Paradise Papers reveal.
The Paradise Papers is a special investigation by The Guardian and 95 media partners worldwide into a leak of 13.4million files from two offshore service providers and 19 tax havens' company registries, reports The Guardian.
The files reveal the offshore financial affairs of some of the world’s biggest multinational companies and richest individuals, and set out the myriad ways in which tax can be avoided using artificial structures
Stephen Bronfman, heir to the Seagram fortune, who was instrumental in Trudeau’s successful bid for the leadership of the Canadian Liberal party in 2013 and the premiership two years later, engaged through his family investment business in a complex web of entities in the US, Israel and the Cayman Islands.
Multimillion-dollar cashflows between the three jurisdictions might legally have avoided taxes in the US, Canada and Israel.
The leaked documents unveil a close relationship between two wealthy families who collaborated to shift millions of dollars to the Cayman Islands. On one side were the Bronfman family, inheritors of the Seagram distillery fortune in Montreal, reports Guardian.
On the other side was the Cayman Islands-based trust of Leo Kolber, a former Canadian senator and powerhouse within the Liberal party Trudeau now leads.
The disclosures are likely to generate political heat for the Canadian premier, who swept to power in October 2015 partly on his promise to tackle economic inequality and take on tax avoidance.
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