Reported by MIKE HAGER

Public registries created by Ottawa, British Columbia and Quebec to allow people to find a corporation’s hidden owners have made it more difficult for criminals to funnel their ill-gotten gains into shell companies, an expert has told an international conference.

But other provinces and territories, such as Ontario and Alberta, have not yet created such registries – which means the true ownership of more than half the companies registered in Canada remains hidden from the public, Sasha Caldera told Wednesday’s Journalism Under Siege conference in Vancouver.

That is a major reason why Canada will continue being a global destination for money-laundering, said Mr. Caldera, a Toronto-based beneficial ownership campaign manager for Publish What You Pay Canada, a non-profit advocacy group fighting corruption in the country’s natural resources sector. An amount equal to up to 5 per cent of Canada’s GDP is estimated as being laundered through the country each year, a phenomenon now called “snow-washing,” he said.

“Ontario happens to have a million corporations registered in the province, so that’s a huge gap that needs to be shut down,” Mr. Caldera said in his presentation at the conference, which was sponsored by a trio of anti-corruption organizations and that hosted journalists and media experts from around the world.

Ontario collects this information on hidden ownership but keeps it all private, while Alberta doesn’t require corporations to record if someone has a secret stake in their enterprise or disclose who that may be, he said.

Read full report: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-beneficial-ownership-registries-curb-money-laundering-but-ontario-and/