Mulroney… again…

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We recently blogged about the tax amnesty deal negotiated by tax attorney Wilfrid Lefebvre on behalf of ex-prime minister of Canada Brian Mulroney. At the time, we decide to cover only half the story, today we’ll report the other half, and this time we’ll also link Lyin’ Brian with Carole Gouin - former director of the Montreal Tax Service Office . You may remember Carole Gouin from a blog posting we made in June 2014 which eluded to inappropriate behaviour on her part.

At the same time as the Mulroney negotiations were in progress, Wilfrid Lefebvre was negotiating another voluntary disclosure, closely associated with Lyin’ Brian’s deal, for the firm of Ogilvy Renault; the firm where Lyin’ Brian became a partner after leaving politics; the firm where Lyin’ Brian had begun his law career in 1964; the same firm where Maitre Lefebvre now practices (now called Norton Rose Fullbright, since the June 1, 2011 merger). What a tangled web of lies and deceit…

Because of Lyin’ Brian voluntary disclosure, Ogilvy Renault had to come clean on a tax problem they had with regards to Provincial Income Allocation: The firm did not declare all its income to the province of Quebec. Ogilvy Renault saved taxes every year by attributing 50% of their income to Quebec and 50% to Ontario (where tax rates were more favourable); whereas in truth the allocation was closer to 90% Quebec, 10% Ontario. The law partnership knowingly falsified these ratios to cheat Quebec out of its share of income taxes, it was no secret that the firm did far more business in Quebec than Ontario.

Now the odd thing about both voluntary disclosures was that Madame Gouin decided that she would personally handle their filing; and just as things couldn’t get any more curious we discovered that the accountant who worked on correcting Ogilvy’s Provincial Income Allocation was none other than her common-law spouse, Mr. Veillette (at Samson Belair).

Madame Gouin personally arranged that the voluntary disclosure was accepted by the CRA, thus ensuring that Revenue Quebec would not come back and penalize the $1,000,000 of unpaid taxes. For practical reasons only the managing partners (roughly 10 of the over 200 various partners) at Ogilvy Renault were reassessed for the $1,000,000 owed.