It was unofficially dubbed ‘Richie Leaks’ but the real name was Secrecy For Sale: Inside The Global Offshore Money Maze – that bunch of documents detailing the financial secrets of offshore holding companies leaked last week, via Twitter, by the International Center for Investigative Journalists.
Like hunters beating ring-necked pheasants out of a bush with truncheons (to use an analogy anyone laundering millions might understand), the ICIJ drummed out nearly 130,000 Wall Street crooks, arms dealers, ponzi schemers, and other cheats squirrelling away insane sums of money in places like Liechtenstein and the Isle of Man, so they don’t have to pay income tax on it.
The project, which assembled 86 investigative journalists from across 46 countries, turned up more than 450 Canadians in the 2.5 million digital files – among them, Regina lawyer Tony Merchant, dubbed “Canada’s class-action king” – who moved nearly $2 million to tax havens in the Cook Islands following a dispute with the Canadian Revenue Agency. On Tuesday, Revenue Minister Gail Shea began putting pressure on the CBC to release the rest of the names, under the hazy threat of legal action.
For anyone who makes a non-seven-figure wage and has to look up “money laundering” in the dictionary, the torrent of data is as infuriating as it is hard to parse.
Luckily, Canada made its own contribution to Richie Leaks with Stashing Their Cash, an interactive infographic developed by CBC News. Acknowledging the various benefits and drawbacks of the “60 or so offshore jurisdictions” for socking away untaxed dough, it’s an exceptionally informative breakdown of how exactly tax havens operate.
“The most important thing is to show people how the world works,” says Harvey Cashore, Senior Producer at CBC’s Special Investigations Unit. The interactive project was part of the network’s multi-pronged approach to releasing the stacks of information.
It works like this: you pick from one of 16 havens (Barbados and Cayman Islands, where Canadians have lodged nearly $80 billion, seems the securest). Then, you create a secret identity for stashing your dough, like an offshore trust or a private foundation, chose a bank (Scotiabank, CICB and RBC Wealth Management all have offshore branches promising confidentiality), move the money offshore via a phony lawsuit, gem smuggling or good old fashioned cash in a briefcase (Merchant was reported to have transferred his money to the South Pacific by snail, mailing it in increments of thousands).
“It wasn’t just about educating the public,” says Cashore. “It was about educating us. Tax havens and offshore shell corporations seem so complicated. But once you see how it works, it’s not that complicated. It’s just meant to appear that way.”
More than being informative, it’s also kind of fun. Though it’s not really a “game” in any strict sense, the infographic/app encourages exploring the available data and cooking up different combinations to increase investment return, while diminishing the chance of getting busted by the Canadian Revenue Agency.
For Canada’s 99% still invested in the social contract of taxation, it’s the closest we’ll get to living like ultra-rich tax cheats, providing all the info you need to circumvent taxation law, but without the danger of getting caught – or the added humiliation of those pleated Bermuda shorts.
