Court records have shown an Alberta businessman who has quietly been teeing up hundreds of millions of dollars in deals for Chinese investors to buy oilpatch assets to be targeted by the Canada Revenue Agency's criminal investigations into the Panama Papers, the first to be so revealed.
Wentao Yang's million-dollar Calgary home, a West Vancouver mansion used by him and his wife, and their accountant's office north of Toronto were the targets of headline-grabbing CRA raids last Valentine's Day, as agents sought evidence of tax evasion by Yang through a slew of offshore companies he is involved in.
The CRA alleges that the Shanghai-born financier evaded more than $860,000 in income tax and GST on nearly $2.7 million in income he pocketed from brokering one of the biggest Chinese purchases in the oilpatch in recent years.
Reports indicate that Yang has not personally reported any earnings derived from his involvement in the deal.
Yang has not been charged with any offence.
The tax-evasion investigation into Yang stems from the Panama Papers, the huge leak of 11.7 million financial records in April 2016 that exposed how some of the world's richest and most powerful people use secretive offshore companies to hide their wealth.
