At its heart, the investigation is an audit of three charitable organizations in Canada and the United States — The Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman Charitable Foundation, the Canada-Israel Education Foundation, and the Friends of Israel Initiative. Given regulations and public access to data laws with respect to the financial information in both countries, the investigation, which began in December 2018, should have been relatively simple.
The investigation was anything but. RCMP officers should be made aware that investigating Gerald Schwartz is like riding a bull. I also should warrant, yet again, that this began with a completely unrelated investigation into the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto. It had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the integrity of a law school. That it could veer so wildly into what it did speaks volumes. Canada has serious issues that must be addressed by honest individuals. This is now a very corrupt and dangerous country. Bordering on deranged, as I have unfortunately learned. I hope I am dealing with honest men and women who want to put things right.
This is not the Canada I love. One of the main reasons I did this is because if good people won’t go the extra mile, bad ones will.
I am, unfortunately, not filled with confidence.
The Canada-Israel Education Foundation was discovered in October 2018. After a cursory review of its financials, it was noticed that this charitable organization had not filed its required 2017 T3010 Charitable Information Return. It was hypothesized at that time that it could be the “layering” phase of money laundering. But only if the charity’s tax-exempt status was automatically revoked, which would have been the method deployed by conspirators to ‘cover their tracks’. Though intermittent checks began, it was not otherwise pursued. It felt too unbelievable to be true and it was believed that a T3010 would appear.
On November 24th, 2018, tax-exempt status was revoked by the CRA from the Canada-Israel Education Foundation. An investigator noticed it on the 26th. The investigator immediately notified the Canada Revenue Agency and requested a callback. No call back was received in the subsequent week.
Concern built. An informal information request was then placed for more information on the Canada-Israel Education Foundation and the Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman Charitable Foundation from the Canada Revenue Agency. The investigators wanted hard copies of the T3010 Charitable Information Returns, all internal financial information, all correspondence from the CRA, and the Application to Register a Charity Under the Income Tax Act for all the entities. The investigators expected this request to be fulfilled prior to Christmas, or at least a response from the CRA indicating the expected wait time for a response, which was their usual expectation for communication. Nothing happened.
Over the holidays, an intense investigation using publicly available electronic data from the Canada-Israel Education Foundation began. The lead investigator was soon convinced that significant abnormalities had been identified that required attention. In January contact attempts were made with numerous media outlets. These were brief emails, indicating that it appeared that these charities may have been involved in passing illicit payments and included a brief biographical sketch of Schwartz among other documents.
At this point, several Income Tax Act of Canada violations had been confirmed. The emails were attempts to motivate media members to conduct a broader investigation by proving that these charities had acted illegally in some capacity. No email was responded to. The primary investigator was hung up on numerous times.
In late January, an investigator began attempting to contact politically motivated blogs with access to a University. Universities have access to multiple domain experts which could facilitate an investigation and the hope was that one would pick it up. The content was edited for political beliefs, though the intent remained the same — an appropriate investigation into this charity by either authorities or an investigative journalism unit with access to multiple domain experts.
One blog responded to email inquiries. It was the editors from the blog of a controversial University of New Brunswick Professor named Ricardo Duchesne. They had read the documents sent. It appears they were the only parties to have ever done so at this point.
Dr. Duchesne contacted this investigator in late January. He was noticeably shaken by the information and deeply fearful of Gerald Schwartz. He declined to take over due to safety concerns for his family. However, he offered, quite magnanimously, to publish a biographical sketch of Gerald Schwartz which had been prepared.
One investigator decided that the investigation must be completed in some form until a major newspaper or university was willing to take over (me). I felt, quite honestly, that considering this appeared to be a money-laundering plot involving the Prime Minister of Canada, it would be irresponsible to drop it. The audit of the Friends of Israel Initiative Inc. was then conducted in February 2019.
The audit of the Friends of Israel Initiative confirmed major abnormalities, including that this Miami, Florida charity had no form of normal operations while it stacked up cash on its balance sheet which emptied out when Stephen Harper joined the “think-tank”. But there was more. Charities are state-regulated in the United States. Though the author was able to obtain many documents, including all of the charity’s federal IRS tax returns, several state-level documents were missing. Most troublingly, searches of the Florida registry of charities drew a blank. It appears that all documents for this charity have been erased from the state’s official charitable registry.
Notably, the author was very disquieted that the Congressional Representatives for the home address of the Friends of Israel were actually “Founder Members” at the organization, including former Clinton Foundation CEO Donna Shalala. It was, quite frankly, unbelievable. Moreover, the Friends of Israel appeared to never disclose its Florida address anywhere other than required sections of its tax returns.
See for yourself: Search Florida Charitable Registry >>
In March the article appeared on Ricardo Duchesne’s controversial blog about Gerald Schwartz. At this time I was working to confirm every intermediary payment flowing out of the Canada-Israel Education Foundation was illegal. A clear path was appearing through the asset trace I was conducting in spare time to prove Criminal Fraud, but only if the Informal Information Request from the CRA was responded to and only if it provided the initial application for the Canada-Israel Education Foundation in the earlier Informal Information Requests. The information requests had not been responded to.
I was at a loss at this point. I began considering what would happen to the investigation if the public balance sheets for the Canada-Israel Education Foundation changed on the Canadian government site. I felt paranoid even thinking it, but I archived all balance sheets and foreign intermediary payments from Canada-Israel between 2011 and 2016, the entire charity’s lifespan. I also, by accident, archived one of the T1236s from the Schwartz Foundation from 2011 (it was in an open browser window, that’s all it was). That turned out to be really important. Almost all of the remaining Schwartz payments are still available online and in the case of fiscal 2012, I’ve confirmed the vast majority through another Blumberg document. I’ve got copies of 95% of the donations through archived or online sources.
Crucial, because everything changed in late May. There appears to have been a concerted effort, very well co-ordinated, to end the investigation in one fell swoop. Ricardo Duchesne was subjected to a massive attack led by the Huffington Post tarring him as a white supremacist. This caused his resignation from the University of New Brunswick within a week. The attack was so unexpected and ferocious, an academic is now studying it as an example of “mob effect.” It was the ultimate hit piece.
Arianna Huffington, the founder and recently editor of the Huffington Post, sits on the board of directors at Onex Corporation, whose CEO and Chairman is, of course, Gerald Schwartz, the source of the illicit payments. Onex Corporation was the primary benefactor of Nigel Wright’s conduct while Chief of Staff vis a vis Air Canada. The Canadian Historical Association also penned a letter in support of Duchesne’s dismissal. Irving Abella, a past President of the CHA, is implicated in Criminal Fraud as he sits with Gerald Schwartz on the board of directors at the private foundation which sourced the illegal payments. Schwartz is deeply intertwined with the Toronto Star, the National Post, and CanWest Global. All three published articles critical of Mr. Duchesne at this time, while only the CBC, unrelated to Schwartz, took up his defense.
At the exact same time, the Charity Directorate of Canada suddenly removed information from public access on their official government website. There had been no prior warning of these changes and caused a great deal of consternation among charitable law attorneys. The effect of the changes was very subtle but made this particular investigation impossible to reproduce from the outside. Then, call agents at the CRA were limited to respond to information on charities in a similar fashion. Then, the information on the Canada-Israel Education Foundation disappeared from the one online private source available — charitydata.com. All the sources were gone within about a week and Duchesne had lost his job.
Cathy Hawara has been identified as a potentially responsible individual at the Charity Directorate. Cathy advised Stephen Harper at the Privy Council on personnel matters before being named acting Director-General of the Charity Directorate on October 25th, 2009. As can now be shown, the fraudulent application for the Canada-Israel Education Foundation was submitted to the Canada Revenue Agency on July 9th, 2009. It was approved under Cathy Hawara’s watch. She was named the full-time director in October 2010, immediately after Nigel Wright was named Chief of Staff to Stephen Harper.
Hawara remained Director-General of the Charity Directorate until May 2016, right about when Canada-Israel was shutting down and with Stephen Harper about to arrive at the Friend of Israel. At that time, Hawara was promoted to Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Legislative Policy and Regulatory Affairs at the CRA. She is now in the role that the Director-General at the Charity Directorate directly reports to. In this role, she was responsible for exacting the information loss felt in May 2019.
Cathy Hawara has been accused on numerous occasions of operating the Charity Directorate in a partisan fashion in favor of Stephen Harper while she was Director-General. This included targeting progressive charities for audit and suppressing audits of Conservative charities. Her conduct was so controversial in this respect that the publication The Tyee has called for an official government inquiry into the Charity Directorate’s conduct while she was Director-General.
I should also reveal that I’ve uncovered a suspicious death which may relate to the laundered funds. The sudden death of a York University Professor in late December 2010 named David Noble. Noble was investigating Gerald Schwartz and other participants in the “Israel Emergency Cabinet.” He suspected that they were involved in money laundering. Noble was using, of all things, a defamation case against York University scheduled for early 2011 to attempt to expose money laundering inside CIJA. His big idea was that he could use the lawsuit to compel damaging testimony. Noble felt that if he could expose the lobby he would have “made a difference.”
His sudden death weeks from his 2011 trial prevented exposure of the laundering, which had begun only six months earlier. He fell ill and within 48 hours was dead. The cause of death was listed as complications from virulent pneumonia. He was healthy and had no known illness of any kind prior to falling ill.
This is a big problem. By early June only one person could re-create the case after the online T3010 data had disappeared. Me. And, I didn’t yet have the Application necessary to complete the Criminal Fraud case. Not a good position to be in.
The Application to Register a Charity Under the Income Tax Act was not obtained until August 30th. The Informal Information Request, which took seven months for a response, apologized for being late and incomplete. Less than half of the requested information was in that response with no explanation beyond recommending that the investigator contact the Canada-Israel Education Foundation itself for the information.
I was capable of completing the Criminal Fraud case only because of the earlier archiving of data and Blumberg Law luckily had published several volumes which covered much of the rest. Other than that the bribe would have disappeared. The CRA changes were that effective.
Now, about being the only person with very damaging information on a billionaire who employs Mossad espionage agents. Not fun. Though I cannot confirm it, and will not (how would I?), I am personally somewhat certain that Gerald sent his ‘goons’ to chase me around all of August. Given they are assassins by trade, it’s fairly difficult to confirm something like that. I didn’t stop to ask who they were, but the fake road repair crew they set up on Labour Day at 3 AM to try and get me to slow down and run their “gauntlet” was a pretty big tell.
Researching Shabtai Shavit, fortunately, gave me a well-spring of information on how Mossad kills people. I’ve read pretty much everything on the topic at this point. Which meant I knew it would likely be poison unless they got desperate. I also knew they had the motivation to kill me. If Schwartz would take all that trouble to activate Cathy Hawara at the CRA and start a massive online movement to have Duchesne fired, it meant I was getting killed. No doubt.
I knew what to look for and what to do. I just had to wait it out and get the application. I wasn’t going to get caught off guard as I did in May underestimating what Gerald Schwartz could do. Pretend time was over.
I survived because I was totally committed. Didn’t matter if they weren’t coming at all, I would act as if they were already here. Rotating and randomized schedules for months, never eating anything not prepared in front of me, never leaving home until the middle of the night, avoiding any crowd, looking out for pairs (assassins always work in pairs). And, a bunch more. It’s not exciting. It’s just understanding how they would plan and making that part of it impossible. They can’t prepare to end your life if you’ve already torn it down.
Gerald can and does do a lot. I was called crazy for this. I didn’t care. If this sounds insane, you are underestimating him. I would recommend not doing that. It is a mistake. You can’t make one.
Besides, I identified a tail and my car got turned over twice in early August. It wasn’t hard to figure out something abnormal was happening.
Luckily for me, a popular Youtube Vlogger was kind enough, on short notice, to drop everything and do an online disclosure of the information on September 10th. He spent a week verifying the information and then agreed. I exposed the raw evidence files shortly before the broadcast. His hour and a half video got about 5,000 views and linked to the raw evidence. It was rough, but it was enough. Others could download it. I wasn’t a single node anymore, or at least they couldn’t assume I was. All the craziness immediately dissipated.
Interestingly, Donald Trump fired John Bolton, the only individual in the White House involved at the Friends of Israel about two hours after I posted the Raw Evidence online.
