Federal Sen. Nicole Eaton has taken the unusual step of asking the Senate Ethics Officer to investigate revelations — presented to her by the Toronto Star and CBC/Radio-Canada — that she was a director of a company in the offshore tax haven of the Bahamas for 12 years without declaring it.

Her explanation: She had no idea until a Toronto Star reporter told her on Tuesday.

Eaton, a Conservative senator who recently made headlines with her anti-bike lane tweets, is listed as a director of a Bahamas-based company called Mount Bodun Ltd. between 1999 and 2011, according to Bahamian corporate registration records leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared exclusively with the Toronto Star and CBC/Radio-Canada in Canada.

Each year, senators must declare any corporate director or officer positions they hold to comply with the Senate’s Code of Ethics. Eaton’s annual disclosure statements dating back to her appointment to the Senate by Stephen Harper in 2008 repeatedly say, “None,” in response to the question about corporate directorships.

Approached for comment Tuesday, Eaton denied, through a spokesperson, any knowledge of being a director in Mount Bodun Ltd. After being shown copies of her name on the register of directors, where her occupation is listed as “senator,” she issued a written statement to the Star and the CBC saying she had only learned of her directorship with Mount Bodun through the reporters’ questions.

“I became aware of the matter of Bahamian company Mount Bodun Ltd.’s alleged listing of me as a director of the company on Sept. 19, 2016,” the statement reads. “A reporter from the Toronto Star contacted my office seeking comment on this matter.”

The statement says she maintains her initial assertion that she “knew nothing of this” and has “never served on this company’s board of directors . . . . This clearly occurred without my knowledge or consent.”

It says her office informed the Senate Ethics Officer of the issue on Tuesday and committed to providing “our full co-operation in the review of this situation.”

“I am prepared to swear an affidavit attesting that I had no knowledge of or participation in, any part of the listing of my name as a director of Mount Bodun Ltd. in any way whatsoever, and that I remain in full compliance with the Senate of Canada’s Ethics and Conflict of Interest Code for Senators.”

The question of how a sitting senator, a “politically exposed person” in the parlance of the financial industry, could end up on the board of a tax haven company without her knowledge is puzzling even to experts.

“The Ethics Officer should not accept the story without evidence,” said Duff Conacher, co-founder of Ottawa-based Democracy Watch, a government ethics advocacy group. “If she does not do a full inquiry to essentially require the senator to prove this story is true, she’ll just confirm once again what a lapdog she is.”

The Senate Ethics Officer’s office confirmed that it had received a call from Eaton’s office and is looking into the matter.

“Taken at face value, (Eaton) is doing what she should do. The ethics officer will look into it,” said Richard Powers, director of the governance programs at U of T’s Rotman School of Management. “You could put anybody’s name on that and they would not necessarily know. It is that easy.”

Eaton’s assertions that she was unwittingly made a director of a Bahamian company are supported by the woman who admits to listing Eaton without consulting her: Marian Bassett, a member of the famous Canadian Bassett family.

“I put Nicky down as a director because she is a very, very old family friend,” said Marian Bassett, whose late husband, David, is the son of John Bassett, who founded the CTV television network.

“I just put her name down because it was safe, and I never told her,” said Bassett, describing the company as a financial vehicle for the family’s estate and the couple’s three children. “She didn’t even know she was on (the company’s board) . . . . Listen, it’s all on me.”

The decision was made, she says, during a “stressed situation” when her husband was in and out of hospital with health issues.

“It was just a sh-- show is all I can say and then it just fell through the cracks.”

Bassett says she was the sole controlling hand of Mount Bodun and Eaton was never paid for her role as a figurehead director.

Neither Eaton’s appointment as a director, nor her resignation, required a signature to be filed with the Bahamian corporate registry, Bassett said.

“Ask me how that happens. Only in the Bahamas, right?”

That lack of verification is striking. Even in the secretive world of offshore finance, signed documents and copies of valid identification, including passport images, are normally required by law for corporate directors.

Yesterday, the Star and CBC/Radio-Canada reported on the resignation of federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau from a Bahamian company for which he served as director until after the last federal election in October.

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He resigned from that company on Oct. 26 with a signed document, obtained by the Star and the CBC, that reads, “I hereby tender my resignation as a director and/or officer of the corporation.”

But a Bahamian corporate registry official confirmed Thursday that directorship appointments or resignations, which are filed by private registration agents, are not verified and no signed documents are shared with the registry.

“(A signature) is not given to us,” said Bahamian companies registry branch supervisor Donna Lightbourne. “We only receive what they send to us, which is the list of officers and directors. That is what the Act requires. Nothing else . . . . They wouldn’t send that information to us. It is private information . . . . Our business is only to record.”

The Star and the CBC repeatedly attempted to seek comment from the two Nassau-based registered agents for Mount Bodun Ltd.: Sidney Collie and Mike Klonaris. Neither agent responded to emails and calls to their offices.

“That someone could perpetrate this without someone knowing about it, it goes to the lax compliance regime that goes on there. That’s what attracts people to these jurisdictions,” said Powers, the Rotman professor. “It’s not Canada. It’s not the United States. They have not gone through and tightened up a lot of these things and that’s why people go there. It’s easy, convenient and cheap.”

Twelve years after secretly appointing her friend as a director, Bassett said she removed Eaton from the company board of directors in 2011, again without her knowledge.

“I honestly hadn’t thought that Nicky’s name was still on there. I had completely forgotten at that point. I didn’t need directors other than myself, myself and myself. She never signed anything and she didn’t even know . . . . And it didn’t even occur to me to think of it when she became a senator. I just never thought of it.

“I’m to blame. I’m the one who didn’t tell her. If she had known, she could have disclosed it and would have. She didn’t know.”

Bassett’s motivations for listing Eaton reflected the ties between the two families — and the two couples. The husbands of Bassett and Eaton were close family friends, she said. And Bassett, herself, became close with Eaton during her marriage to David.

Eaton’s husband, Thor Eaton, served as a director of a separate company owned by David Bassett in the Bahamas called Misty Enterprises Ltd. between Nov. 27, 2002 and Oct. 6, 2011, the Bahamian registry shows.

Eaton confirms in her written statement that Thor served as executive director with Misty Enterprises Ltd., adding that “at no time did (he) receive remuneration or other benefit of any kind for (his) work.”

Marian Bassett, who defended her friend after reporters reached out to Eaton for comment, says the friendship between the two families gave her comfort.

“My motivation was because Thor and Nicky were such old friends, that I knew the kids’ estate would be in good hands and protected. I never even went beyond that thinking at the time. I wanted communication between one hand and the other, between the one company David had and the company I had.”

The Bahamas is considered by many experts one of the most secretive financial jurisdictions in the world, slow to adopt transparency and reporting measures that many of its tax-haven nation competitors have reluctantly embraced in recent years.

The country was routinely used as an investment destination by Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers scandal that exposed widespread tax evasion techniques used by the world’s wealthy.