When I was a kid I would often hear stories about some old-timer in Westfort or an old lady in the East End who had buried money in tin cans in the backyard.
I always dreamed about digging up a can full of musty, old one-dollar bills but it never happened. For all I know there may still be buried treasure in parts of the city.
But one group of international journalists was much luckier with their treasure-seeking. They recently discovered untold trillions in cash – not in anybody’s backyard but discreetly tucked away in offshore bank accounts.
It is hard to imagine having so much cash that it needs to be hidden away to avoid paying taxes. And why can’t you afford to pay your bills anyway when your bank account is that huge?
We’ve all known for years about rich people hiding money offshore. Most of us don’t have such high class worries. But according to the leaked documents over a hundred thousand people do, including over four hundred well-off Canadians.
About 2.5 million digital files were leaked, exposing the secret world of off-shore tax havens. Even the investigators were surprised at how vast the tax-cheaters network had become, representing 170 countries and an estimated $32 trillion.
This network has long been a loophole for the world’s super-rich but surprisingly, even the slightly-rich with a paltry few millions to hide are turning to offshore banks for their tax-evasion needs.
Right across the board it looks like greed is still a big motivator.
Plutocrats, heads-of-state, celebrities and even run-of-the-mill millionaires are getting twitchy. The leaked information has already triggered nervous responses by government officials from the U.K., the U.S., India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran and Canada.
Only one of the four hundred Canadian names has been released. He is lawyer Tony Merchant who appears to have stashed $1.7 million somewhere in the South Pacific during a dispute with Revenue Canada.
The beneficiary of the account is his wife, Canadian Senator Pana Merchant. I’m sure her husband, the lawyer, can explain everything.
Of course not all 100,000 names are crooks, just some of them. Hopefully this flood of information will make it easier to track real criminal activity.
Investigators are now able to trace the strangely “disappeared” fortunes of dictators such as Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Future tyrants will have to hide their fortunes elsewhere.
All these leaks and revelations could shatter confidence in off-shore banks as safe, secure tax havens for the wealthy and/or the dishonest and/or outright criminals.
For an average Joe like me, personal greed on this scale boggles my mind. Even if these cash stashers did decide to pay their fair share of taxes they would still have billions left.
Are they planning to spend any of it or do they just like to hoard money?
Personally, I don’t have an off-shore bank account but by the same token I don’t bury my cash in the back yard either. However, if there are any millionaires in Thunder Bay with cash to hide, I have a suggestion.
All you rich guys are welcome to stash your cash in tin cans and bury them in my back yard. I’ll keep an eye on them for you.
There are no fees but if I accidentally dig up a can or two, I reserve the right to take a few bucks for coffee.
Then you can relax. There will be no computer files to hack and best of all, I won’t breathe a word to Revenue Canada.
Sometimes the old-fashioned remedies are the best.
