Federal auditors request for accounting giant’s records stalls yet again, 7 years into tax probe
The Chan family is one of the wealthiest in British Columbia and is known for donating millions to philanthropic causes.
Led by billionaire brothers Caleb and Tom Chan, the family donated $40 million this year to a Vancouver Art Gallery relocation project that will be christened the Chan Centre for the Visual Arts.
But right across the street from the existing gallery, a far different portrait of the Chan brothers is emerging, as they battle the Canada Revenue Agency in the Federal Court of Canada over a decade-long offshore tax dodge.
Numerous internal emails filed in court this summer reveal the Chans' involvement in a KPMG offshore scheme so secret that neither tax collectors nor even their spouses were ever supposed to find out.
The Chan brothers may be the most prominent of several wealthy families whose identities have been revealed over the past few years as being part of the scheme.
The records show the Chan brothers were part of a group of more than 20 wealthy Canadians whose families had at least $5 million to invest in a sophisticated KPMG tax dodge first developed out of the accounting firm's Vancouver office in the late 1990s.
The KPMG offshore tax dodge helped wealthy clients set up shell companies on the Isle of Man, a tiny tax haven in the middle of the Irish Sea. It promised clients they could pay "no tax" on their investments and hide money from their ex-spouses.
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