Nearly two years after the Panama Papers leak was made public, Canadian tax officials have carried out their first major raids, executing three search warrants across the country. The simultaneous raids Wednesday morning in West Vancouver, Calgary and the GTA were all related to the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, whose internal files were leaked to the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and shared with journalists around the world, including the Toronto Star and CBC/Radio-Canada. In 2016 and 2017, thousands of reports were published based on the leak, dubbed the Panama Papers, laying bare the inner workings of the offshore tax evasion industry, which has orchestrated the movement of trillions of dollars out of the reach of tax authorities around the world. The Star and CBC found more than 300 Canadian passports in Mossack Fonseca’s files, and identified Canada’s biggest offshore clearing houses, which used the Panamanian law firm to set up thousands of offshore shell companies on behalf of their clients. While the Canada Revenue Agency has been auditing 122 Canadians found in the leak and says it has executed a number of search warrants previously, this is the first time that such a major investigative milestone has been publicized as it happened.

Source: thestar February 14, 2018 20:48 UTC