The major Canadian firms in the Panama Papers

There are 912 offshore entities with Canadian links named in the Panama Papers.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists made data on 200,000 global entities available on its website at 1800 GMT (2 p.m. EDT) Monday.

Advisor.ca combed through the database and found several Canadian financial and legal institutions within. Setting up an offshore company is not by itself illegal or evidence of illegal conduct, and Mossack Fonseca said it observed rules requiring it to identify its clients. The appearance of particular persons and companies on the list in no way implies wrongdoing.

Notable Canadian financial institutions in the database acted as intermediaries and officers. The ICIJ defines an intermediary as “a go-between for someone seeking an offshore corporation and an offshore service provider — usually a law-firm or a middleman that asks an offshore service provider to create an offshore firm for a client.” It defines an officer as “a person or company who plays a role in an offshore entity.”

The Canadian firms included:

• Bennett Jones LLP as an intermediary (here)
• Blake, Cassels & Graydon (Calgary) as an intermediary (here)
• Haywood Securities Inc. as an officer (here, here, here and here)
• HSBC Securities Canada as an officer (here)
• Macquarie Private Wealth Inc. (acquired by Richardson GMP in 2013) as an officer (here)
• Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt (Toronto) as an intermediary (here)
• RBC Dominion Securities as an intermediary (here)
• Sprott Asset Management Inc. as an officer (here)

There are more than 1,300 officers and more than 200 intermediaries with Canadian links. The ICIJ says the data “is current through 2015.”

Editor’s note: The ICIJ website is experiencing high volume and links may go to a 404 page temporarily. Please be patient.

Recognize a name or company in the database? Email us your tip.

The database

The database contains basic corporate information about companies, trusts and foundations set up in 21 jurisdictions including Hong Kong and the U.S. state of Nevada. The data was obtained from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which said it was hacked.

Users can search the data and see the networks involving the offshore companies, including, where available, Mossack Fonseca’s internal records of the true owners.

Information and documents on bank accounts, phone numbers and emails have been removed from the database.

The ICIJ said it was putting the information online “in the public interest” as “a careful release of basic corporate information” as it builds on an earlier database of offshore entities.

As ICIJ consortium member Toronto Star reports, the database contains “basic information that would be public if the corporations had been registered in more transparent jurisdictions.”

Critique of offshore companies

Anti-poverty campaigners say shell companies can be used by the wealthy and powerful to shield money from taxation, or to launder the gains from bribery, embezzlement and other forms of corruption. The Group of 20 most powerful economies has agreed that individual governments should make sure authorities can tell who really owns companies, but implementation in national law has lagged.

The data cache, first leaked to Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily, showed offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders. Reports based on the documents quickly led to the resignation of Iceland’s Prime Minister David Gunnlaugson after it was revealed he and his wife had set up a company in the British Virgin Islands that had holdings in Iceland’s failed banks. British Prime Minister David Cameron, who had campaigned for financial transparency, faced questions about shares he once held in an offshore trust set up by his father. The ICIJ reported that associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin moved some $2 billion through such companies. Putin’s spokesman dismissed the report.

Hundreds of economists urged world leaders Monday to end the era of tax havens, arguing they only benefit rich individuals and multinational corporations and serve to increase inequality.

The 300 economists, in a letter co-ordinated by activist group Oxfam, say poorer countries are hit hardest by tax dodging.

“As the Panama Papers and other recent exposes have revealed, the secrecy provided by tax havens fuels corruption and undermines countries’ ability to collect their fair share of taxes,” the letter said. “While all countries are hit by tax dodging, poor countries are proportionately the biggest losers, missing out on at least $170 (billion) of taxes annually as a result.”

The letter comes days before an anti-corruption summit in London, featuring politicians from 40 countries as well as representatives from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Many of the companies that featured in the Panama Papers were incorporated in British Overseas Territories and the British Virgin Islands.