Chair of Canadian Mint helped run offshore 'tax-avoidance scheme' for clients

[RedHot25]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/jim-...ents-1.2441347

The chair of the Royal Canadian Mint, who also served as an adviser on international taxation to the federal Finance Department, helped engineer the transfer of millions of dollars of a prominent Canadian family through offshore tax havens in what others involved characterized as a "tax avoidance scheme," documents obtained by CBC News show.

The hundreds of records are part of a sprawling lawsuit against James Barton Love, a Toronto tax lawyer who chairs the mint's board of directors, and others by descendants of former prime minister Arthur Meighen. Quietly settled in 2011, the lawsuit saw family members allege that the offshore transactions, which began in 1996, were unlawful and negligent and that Love "breached his fiduciary duties and acted oppressively."

Love, a close friend of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty who was appointed to the Mint's board in 2006, was also a trustee for most of the last decade of the Arthur Meighen Trust, an entity set up by the former Conservative PM in 1949 to distribute his wealth to his family. Before taking on that formal role, documents show Love had been an adviser and "close" friend to several Meighen family members