A sailor, 39-year-old Oleg Niculescu, died when the Ivan Golubets ship caught fire and later sank off the coast of Mauritania last summer. His family has been seeking compensation, but have been chasing a ghost through Canadian companies.
The trawler burned for two days before sinking about 50 metres into the Atlantic Ocean while being towed by another vessel. It's a fight that's taken them to an unexpected place: Canada, where the company that operated the Ivan Golubets is registered, despite having no actual business activity in this country.
The company appears in the FinCEN files, a 16-month-long investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists , BuzzFeed News and partners. It's based on top-secret bank reports filed to the U.S. Treasury Department's intelligence unit, the Financial Crime Enforcement Network, other documents and dozens of interviews.
NDP MP Charlie Angus says Canada is a destination for white-collar criminals looking to hide money, thanks to lax rules. "They needed to have it go underwater and sink," Niculescu's wife told a Ukrainian television station. "Immediately when you said that the insurance policy was effective the same day that the vessel has sunk, I immediately thought of fraud," Belhabib said.
The FinCEN Files is a 16-month-long investigation by the ICIJ, BuzzFeed News and partners. It's based on top-secret bank reports filed to the U.S. Treasury Department's intelligence unit, the Financial Crime Enforcement Network, other documents and dozens of interviews.A New Brunswick connectionThe company advertises products like smoked and dried fish as well as "delicious caviar, shrimps, crab sticks and sea cabbage.
In 2016, Oceanic Fisheries N.B. and Evial Business LP both received transfers of large sums of money from senders that used the same Swiss bank, according to records in the FinCEN Files. The transfers typically happened within a few days of each other or sometimes even on the same day. For both Evial Business LP and Oceanic Fisheries N.B., the money ultimately landed at the same branch of a bank in Moscow.
"Shell entities can be created and used by individuals and businesses for legitimate purposes," the suspicious-activity report says. Dyhia Belhabib, principal investigator of fisheries with Ecotrust Canada, believes the Ivan Golubets was fishing illegally before it caught fire and sank. But New Brunswick corporate records show the company wasn't established in the province until 2011. Its current director lists an address in South Africa, and there aren't any Canadian employees or phone numbers listed on its website.
But when a reporter visited that address, expecting to find Oceanic Fisheries N.B., they hit another dead end. New Brunswick Green Party MLA Kevin Arseneau would like to see the province adopt more transparent corporate registration rules.
NB Media and government transparency is more concerning to Canadians.
NB Lagging behind would suggest Canada were even trying to be in the race.
NB '… they [shell companies] are a concern for money laundering and financial crimes given that they are easy to form, inexpensive to operate and are structured in a manner designed to conceal the transactional details of the entities.' then BAN these shadowy entities already!