CCRA infiltrated by Organized Crime???

[Goober]

CCRA infiltrated by Organized Crime???

Revenue Canada corruption feared over $400K cheque to Nicolo Rizzuto - Montreal - CBC News

The Canada Revenue Agency issued a rebate cheque for nearly $400,000 to a top Quebec Mafia figure even though he owed the tax department $1.5 million at the time, heightening concerns of possible infiltration of the agency by organized crime.

Details about the payment to former Sicilian mob boss Nicolo Rizzuto were unearthed during a three-year investigation by journalists at Radio-Canada, CBC's French-language sister network, into allegations of corruption at the tax agency's Montreal office, which the RCMP have been probing since 2008.

The $381,737.46 cheque was made out to "Nick Rizzuto" and addressed to his house on Antoine Berthelet Avenue in north-end Montreal, a street known as "Mafia row" because it was home to several major players in the city's Sicilian mob.

The cheque is labelled "income tax refund" and is dated Sept. 13, 2007. Rizzuto was in jail then, having been arrested the year prior and charged with extortion, bookmaking and drug smuggling as part of the biggest police crackdown on the Italian Mafia in Canadian history.

Court records show that at the time, he also owed the tax department $1.55 million, which the Canada Revenue Agency tried to collect by getting a tax lien on his home.

 

[taxslave]

CCRA IS a criminal organization and the RCMP is their enforcement arm.

 

[petros]

It's just CRA these days.

 

[taxslave]

It's just CRA these days.

ANd that makes them less criminal?

 

[petros]

Whenever a company makes a name change it's usually post some sort of shake down, scandal or restructuring. I don't see Gov agencies being any different.

 

[Retired_Can_Soldier]

Infiltrated? I've always thought they were the criminals

 

[Goober]

Seems too run deep in La Belle Province.

Revenue Canada issues run deeper than Nicolo Rizzuto cheque: ex-staff - Canada - CBC News

"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.
Anti-organized-crime unit disbanding

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.

"It really puts into question whether the government is really serious about going after organized crime and being tough on crime."

The unit's former staff members also have doubts about whether its work will continue.

"It's so frustrating to know that those types of files will practically never get audited. People are going to think, 'OK, now we can stick it to the system,' " said Martin, who spent most of this career with the Special Enforcement Program.

 

[tober]

...."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."...

See. Canada really is multi-cultural. That's Quebec culture in a nutshell. They can't even get a conviction there. Look at the furor of unprovable allegations after Lyin' Brian left politics.