Eric St-Cyr, a Canadian investment advisor working from his Cayman Island-based financial advisory firm, Clover Asset Management and Canadian Attorney Patrick Poulin, have been sentenced to 14 months in prison for conspiring to launder money. Now, the two men are cooperating with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in investigations from the information they have provided. According to reports, the two men created offshore entities designed to help their US clients evade taxes and other legal requirements. They also used them to launder purported criminal proceeds.
The case represents the IRS commitment to investigate and prosecute individuals worldwide who seek to evade U.S. taxes or who conduct illegal financial transactions, launder money or try to hide the true source of their income to evade paying taxes.
St.-Cyr lived in the Cayman Islands and worked for investment firm Clover Asset Management. Many of its clientele work or reside in Canada, as well as Turks and Caicos, as well as the United States. St-Cyr and Poulin solicited US citizens to use their services to hide assets from the US government, including the IRS. According to reports, Poulin established an offshore corporation called Zero Exposure Inc. and served as a nominal board member. He transferred about $200,000 that he and St. Cyr believed were the proceeds of bank fraud but was actually part of a sting operation. The investment firm represented that it would neither disclosure the investments or any investment gains to the government, nor would it provide monthly statements or other investment statements to the clients. When the investments were sent back to the US the investment firm charged clients fees to launder the proceeds.
