From: AlanBaggett@volcanomail.com   
      
   Revenue Canada issues run deeper than Nicolo Rizzuto cheque: ex-staff : CRA   
   SOTW   
      
   $380K cheque to Nicolo Rizzuto may be tip of the iceberg, Enquête research   
   suggests   
      
   CBC News Posted: Sep 27, 2013 2:52 PM ET   
      
      
   Problems at the Canada Revenue Agency run much deeper than a $381,000 rebate   
   cheque mistakenly issued to a jailed mob boss, according to two former   
   auditors who say they witnessed an attempt to stall a corruption probe and   
   colleagues getting cozy with    
   organized crime.   
      
   The former CRA employees spoke on camera to Radio-Canada's investigative   
   program Enquête as part of a three-year investigation by its journalists into   
   graft allegations at the tax agency's Montreal office.   
      
   The investigation revealed Wednesday that in 2007, the CRA cut a cheque for   
   $381,737.46 to Nicolo Rizzuto, patriarch of Quebec's Sicilian Mafia. At the   
   time, the revenue agency had a lien on Rizzuto's home because he owed $1.55   
   million in unpaid taxes.   
      
   Federal Revenue Minister Kerry-Lynne Findlay acknowledged in a statement   
   Thursday afternoon that the cheque should never have been sent.    
      
   "Those responsible for misconduct must be held accountable. We are acting to   
   hold people accountable," the statement said.   
      
   But the cheque may be just the tip of the iceberg, Enquête's research   
   suggests. Jean-Pierre Paquette, a retired auditor with the CRA's   
   anti-organized-crime unit who learned of the cheque, said he raised wider   
   concerns about possible collusion between    
   some agency personnel and a pair of construction executives, one of whom has   
   ties to organized crime.   
      
   Those concerns eventually led to a years-long RCMP investigation that has   
   resulted in more than 100 criminal charges against former CRA staff, the   
   construction magnates, accountants and others.    
      
   But when Paquette first voiced his apprehensions, it took nearly a year for   
   something to be done, he said.    
   "I can't speak to the organization there. I'm talking about certain people,   
   one person in particular," he said in an interview in French. "Just saying,   
   'Well, look, we won't do this, we don't really have the time to deal with that   
   information, we could    
   be doing other things, we could move on to something else.'    
      
   "Until, at a certain moment, I met with a senior manager… and I said, 'Listen,   
   we have a little problem, because I've got proof that there's corruption.' And   
   from that point, well that's where it got going."   
      
   A $381,737 tax-rebate cheque issued by the Canada Revenue Agency to Quebec   
   crime boss Nicolo Rizzuto is stoking concerns about possible corruption at the   
   agency. (CBC)   
      
   Another former auditor in the anti-organized-crime unit said a family with   
   close Mafia ties tried to bribe him in 2002 after their construction company   
   hid $12 million from the tax man.   
      
   "In the accountant's office, the elder family member approached me and told me   
   in no uncertain terms that 'We're prepared to give you an amount, $100,000,   
   and you will lower our assessment," said Robert Martin, who retired two weeks   
   ago from the CRA. "   
   But they'd approached the wrong guy."   
      
   Martin didn't want to divulge the family's name, out of concern for personal   
   safety. But court records confirm the incident and talk about the possibility   
   of a criminal investigation by the RCMP. That investigation never happened,   
   however. Paquette and    
   Martin said they started to wonder whether some of the staff at the Montreal   
   tax office were getting a little too close to people with shady backgrounds.   
   It became all the more apparent when a CRA employee would retire and take up   
   private consulting work,   
    in a few cases for the very mobsters they had been fighting.   
      
   "It's become endemic: senior managers who are involved in a file take their   
   retirement and a month later have become legal advisers or consultants on the   
   same files for the other side," Paquette said. "It's a huge conflict of   
   interest. Huge."   
      
   "One day they're here, the next day they take their retirement and go work for   
   the bad guys. How sincere could they have been while they were here?" Martin   
   wondered.    
      
   "Bosses, team leaders, tax-office heads… go on to become agents for people   
   involved in organized crime."   
   While nine CRA employees have been fired so far as a result of the corruption   
   probe and six face criminal charges filed by the RCMP, there may be a much   
   bigger, still undisclosed problem.    
      
   Sources told Radio-Canada about a network involving some CRA audit personnel   
   that was even bigger than the one that police have cracked. The amounts of   
   money involved were in the tens of millions of dollars.   
      
   According to those sources, a scheme based around corrupt auditors would see   
   them inflate the tax bills of the companies they were auditing.   
      
   Those auditors then forwarded the names of the companies to former colleagues   
   who had left the revenue agency and set up as independent consultants.   
      
   The consultants, in collusion with the auditors, would approach the companies   
   and offer their tax-reduction expertise — in exchange for a big commission.   
      
   It was easy to get the companies' tax bills reduced, because they'd been   
   artificially inflated in the first place. All that was left was for the   
   consultants to share their commission with their auditor friends.   
      
   Meanwhile, as the RCMP continues its investigation into the CRA, the tax   
   agency's special antiorganized-crime team — the unit that worked alongside the   
   Mounties on Project Colisée and helped put most of the top mobsters in Quebec   
   behind bars — is being    
   disbanded. As part of federal budget cuts, the jobs of the Special Enforcement   
   Program's employees countrywide have been eliminated.    
      
   Canada Revenue would not agree to an interview but said in a statement that   
   personnel and resources have not been cut but reassigned to other units.    
      
   "There has been no reduction in resources devoted to fighting tax evasion,"   
   the statement said. "The goals and mandate of the SEP have not been abandoned.   
   The SEP's resources have been moved elsewhere."    
      
   A critic of the government, however, said the unit had special expertise and   
   resources that will be lost or diluted in the shuffle. At the very time the   
   Canada Revenue Agency is reeling from worries about possible mafia   
   infiltration, its top anti-mafia    
   squad has been eliminated.   
      
   "They had people dedicated to looking at organized crime, and so they were   
   able to catch it. And that unit doesn’t exist anymore," said Dennis Howlett,   
   executive director of the advocacy group Canadians for Tax Fairness.    
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)