Louise Blouin has been called one of the richest women in Canada — in the upper half of the country’s one per cent.

You have likely never heard her name.

But over the past 15 years, the Montreal native rose to the pinnacles of the international art publishing world, building an empire that included five secretive offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands, according to documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and Süddeustche Zeitung and shared with the Toronto Star.

The documents, which have never been seen before, along with a rare interview with the media-shy Blouin, provide a unique glimpse into the world of the wealthy elite surrounded by teams of lawyers and accountants who orchestrate complex global corporate structures that even their clients often don’t understand.

“I assume everything is in good standing,” Blouin said in response to the Star’s questions. “I’m not a lawyer and I’m not an accountant. So anything that was structured (in the) British Virgin Islands was done by Deloitte many, many years ago in the United Kingdom.”

It was not done to avoid taxes, she insists, but instead to facilitate her real estate transactions, which she calls a “hobby.”

“It is like my art. I buy and sell art. It is a private hobby,” said Blouin.

Offshore corporate holdings are legal. There are justifiable business reasons for registering companies in traditional tax havens such as the BVI.

But revelations of financial misdeeds contained in the Panama Papers — 11.5 million records leaked from a Panamanian law firm specializing in shell company registration — has triggered renewed public debate and sometimes outrage over the potential for abuse.

International art transactions are often obscured by offshore companies with nominal corporate directors with holdings in free ports, free trade zones and tax havens — the same dark corners of the global financial system inhabited by dictators, politicians, financial fraudsters and others who benefit from the anonymity, the leaked documents show.

The global offshore industry employs banks, accountants, lawyers — all retained by the wealthy to manage their money, and that often means taking advantage of legal loopholes that allow aggressive tax avoidance and evasion while encouraging anonymity and secrecy.

In several interviews with Canadians whose names appear in the offshore tax haven data, the Star has been told that they don’t even know what these companies do or what they are for.

Among them is Blouin, whose personal wealth was estimated at $425 million 10 years ago by Canadian Business. Her holdings are private. “I think that is pretty irrelevant,” said Blouin. “I can’t comment on that. I don’t comment on money.”

Registering companies in tax havens is just doing what she has been told to do.

“They structured it that way for facility,” she said. “They probably don’t want anything under my name. If someone breaks their nose or anything, to not have liability. . . For whatever reason they thought (it) was better. I don’t know. But it was not for tax reasons.”

She currently lives in Switzerland and said she does not pay Canadian taxes because she has lived outside the country for 30 years.

“You pay taxes where you reside . . . nothing of this is applicable to me on the Canadian side.”

Blouin did not know her name was caught up in the Panama Papers leak until she was told by the Star.

“I didn’t even know. . . It is not relevant. It is not because you are in the Panama list that you did something wrong. You are the one informing me about that. You can’t assume everyone with a BVI (company) has done something wrong,” she says.

The one per cent live in a different world than the rest of us, said David Macdonald, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

“We pass them on Bay St., and we think they live in the same world as we do, but they don’t,” said Macdonald, author of the 2014 report “Outrageous Fortune: Documenting Canada’s Wealth Gap.”

“They have the money to pay the people to avoid things like losing all your property when you are sued over a bad business deal. Whereas a regular small business owner would go bankrupt and lose everything. Once you get to a certain level, people don’t have access to your assets anymore, even in a court case.”

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Trying to capture Louise Thérèse Blouin’s early years proves extremely difficult. She is virtually unknown in her hometown of Montreal, despite her former profile in its high society. She guards the details of her private life and only rarely grants interviews, usually deflecting even the most general of questions.

“I don’t talk about my personal life. I usually don’t do interviews as you probably saw on Google. I thought to call you this time because I am a Canadian and I’m spending more time in Canada,” Blouin said.

Blouin was born in 1958 and grew up as one of six children in what she calls a “comfortable” middle-class family that lived in the Montreal suburb of Dorval, barely 100 metres from the shores of Lake Saint-Louis.

Her parents ran the International Life Insurance Co., an insurance brokerage. Father Edouard Blouin was the company’s president and managing director and mother Yolande Viger Blouin worked with him, taking over the company in 1975 after Edouard’s death.

“My mother and father always worked together,” said Blouin. “She didn’t just come in when he passed away. My mother was a businesswoman.”

Yolande Viger Blouin was, by most accounts, a powerful matriarch who believed in the importance of class and privilege and the benefits of marrying well, says one former friend of the family who asked not to be named.

Viger was immensely proud of her ancestry as a direct descendant of the first mayor of Montreal, Jacques Viger. He became mayor in 1833 and served until 1836.

Yolande used this heritage as entry into the world of Montreal’s rich and powerful, says the former friend of the family.

The family belonged to the nearby yacht club and Louise, who with her sister Hélène attended prestigious private schools, can be found in the social pages of the Montreal Gazette. In January 1978, for example, the paper reported that Louise was Canada’s representative at the International Debutante Ball held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York.

After her father’s death, Louise told the Guardian in 2006,she went to live with her elder sister Marie Blouin-Nightingale as she didn’t want to “burden” her mother. In the same interview, Louise said she has a mild form of dyslexia and that she worked part time in a lamp shop as a bookkeeper during high school. Blouin attended McGill University but never graduated.

All three Blouin sisters married well.

Marie married Arthur Nightingale, a successful businessman in the shipping industry.

In 1979,Hélène married Paul Guy Desmarais Jr., son of Paul Desmarais, a member of the family that owned the influential Power Corp., in the society wedding of the year, according to the Montreal Gazette.

Louise was in the wedding party and in attendance were Brian and Mila Mulroney and Louise’s soon-to-be future in-laws — Mr. and Mrs. David Macdonald Stewart, heir to the Macdonald tobacco fortune.

Louise Blouin never talks about her first marriage to David Stewart Jr., whom she married in October 1981. The marriage lasted until December 1984 when a decree absolute was granted.

Soon after her first marriage ended, Blouin met John MacBain, a Rhodes Scholar, Power Corp. wunderkind and the son of a Liberal member of Parliament from Niagara Falls. Blouin and MacBain married in the mid-1980s.

In 1987, the couple seized a moment and made their fortune, creating an online classified ad empire, Trader Classified Media, capitalizing on the growth of the Internet.

“I built my first company with Trader, as you know,” Blouin said in an interview with the Star. “I went on developing. I was the CEO, running operations day-to-day.”

“I had my ex-husband, who is very smart. He did all the acquisitions. I would run the day-to-day and create new products. It was a great team.”

Blouin said that she “grew the business on 50-per-cent growth that was done by organic growth by launching products and acquisitions.”

“Later, we went public. I later sold my shares because I wanted to start in the arts business.”

The couple divorced in 2000, with Blouin receiving $200 million from MacBain for her shares, according to Forbes.

Blouin left for Europe, throwing herself into art — her passion — and into the arms of Simon de Pury, who Tatler magazine called the Mick Jagger of the art auction house world. She worked with de Pury at his auction house, briefly serving as president of the company. But she soon left both the company and de Pury.

With this parting, Blouin transformed herself again.

Blouin was driven by her vision to use art and culture to bring the world together and rid it of its ills.

“I believed having travelled so much in my life, going across borders and cultures, the most fascinating part for me is the complexity of the cultures of each place,” Blouin told the Star. “Since we were brought up in an environment of the arts in our home, I just thought it was a much better tool to have cultural diplomacy than political conflict. I thought we could use the dialogue of culture for something beyond just a museum.”

In 2003, Blouin bought Art + Auction, a magazine for art collectors, then Modern Painters magazine. She then launched an art portal known as artinfo.com. She branded all three with the name Blouin, her personal stamp on her burgeoning publishing empire.

Blouin’s world vision would all to come together at her think-tank, the Louise Blouin Foundation. Blouin hosts TED Talk-like events called the Blouin Creative Leadership Summits, which discuss global issues on a “multidisciplinary level” with heads of states, diplomats and celebrities.

The British press nearly swooned when it became known that Blouin, known as a wealthy, sophisticated French-Canadian fine-art entrepreneur, was going to invest millions to establish her foundation in London.

The jewel in the crown was the Louise T. Blouin Institute at 3 Olaf St., a 1920s coach house located in Notting Hill. Blouin reportedly spent $40 million on the building and renovations.

But Blouin was not long for London, moving to Manhattan at some point, but she is not sure about exact dates. “I don’t remember because I am always travelling so much,” she said.

The Telegraph lamented her departure, saying, “All the worse for us: the capital will be a duller place without her.”

The venue at 3 Olaf continued and emerged as a smashing success in the London scene. It was the place where the Virgin Formula One racing team launched, where actor Bradley Cooper shot some of his movie Burnt and where fashion designer Giorgio Armani held his City of Frames dinner in the fall of 2015.

Then suddenly, during the busy holiday season at the end of 2015, 3 Olaf St. was sold. Its closing, which stunned employees, was announced on the institute’s website:

“3 Olaf Street/Louise Blouin Foundation will cease trading from Friday 4th of December 2015. We would like to thank all our suppliers, clients, current and previous employees for all their support over the past nine years. We were all very excited about 2016 but unfortunately business is business.”

Blouin agreed the building was suddenly sold but the events company is still alive.

“We didn’t discontinue the company. Most of it was on events, but when you don’t have a space anymore, you can’t have events,” she said. “But we still have our activities in the U.K. but outside the building.”

3 Olaf St. was sold on Oct. 28, 2015, to Adena Property Investments Inc., a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, for $53 million, London title records show.

The building sale came out of the blue after they were offered a good deal, said Dawn Fasano, Blouin’s New York lawyer, in an interview. “We made a great profit. We sold it. That is all,” she said.

But before the sale, the leaked documents indicate Blouin was trying to refinance 3 Olaf St., according to an email Lisa Kitely, a solicitor for Fladgate LLP in London sent to Mossack Fonseca on Oct. 2, 2012.

In spring 2013, the leaked documents also show that the British government had started insolvency proceedings against 3 Olaf Street, a company incorporated in the BVI on March 19, 2004. “The company is unable to pay its debts,” court papers state.

Court documents filed in London’s High Court of Justice state the company owed creditors $6.5 million.

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Susan Stone, solicitor for the Crown, told the Star that the British government moved against 3 Olaf Street as the company had a “winding-up” order to shut down.

Stone declined further comment.

Fasano said that the matter was over a construction issue prior to 3 Olaf’s sale. “There was no official windup and there was no official receivership. That had something to do with a very old construction issue. . . It was ruled in our favour,” she said.

The five British Virgin Islands companies — 3 Olaf Street Ltd., 5 Holland Park Ltd., 6 Holland Park Mews Ltd., Bedivere Ltd. and Kirkswood Ltd. — all list Blouin as the registered owner and her third husband, Mathew Kabatoff, a 37-year-old Calgary native, is listed as the sole director on at least three of the companies, according to a memo Mossack Fonseca sent to Fasano.

The consulting firm Deloitte suggested the offshore companies be set up, Fasano told the Star.

“Well, they were privately held companies. They probably held property at one point. That is the only reason why they would be in existence. She was set up by Deloitte & Touche, many years ago. These companies are very old. They just didn’t come into existence recently,” she said.

All four companies except Kirkswood have been wound up or are in the process of winding up, Fasano said.

“3 Olaf is the company that owned the building which we sold and is in the process of being dissolved. It only owned one asset. That company is in the process of being dissolved. The other companies are already dissolved; they aren’t active companies. We have nothing with them. There is nothing there,” Fasano said.

Blouin went big in New York, paying $20 million (U.S.) for a Richard Meier-designed 4,500-square-foot penthouse on Charles St. in 2005. The condo is a work of art with floor-to-ceiling windows and wraparound balconies with an awesome view of Manhattan.

Fasano believes the condo is for sale.

“I think it might be. We always put things up for sale to see what kind of interest we get,” Fasano said.

Staff at the New York offices include people from Modern Painters, which had moved from London, Art + Auction, artinfo.com, production people, finance, and “a rotating half-dozen people who served Louise directly and worked on her foundation and so on. It was a new face every month,” says Lyra Kilston, a former editor at Modern Painters who is now an editor at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

“She wasn’t the kind of publisher who had to review every issue or had to OK everything. There was a lot we could do, which was a blessing,” she says.

During her three years with Louise Blouin Media, Kilston had three different editors-in-chief. She started as an assistant editor and rose to senior editor by the time she left, even functioning as the managing editor. She worked long hours. Her starting salary was $30,000. There were no bonuses, but Blouin did provide health care.

“I was promoted after a year and promised a raise. Then I had to fight for another year to get that raise and that was for $6,000. It took so long and it was incredibly demoralizing,” Kilston said.

“The way she spoke reminded me a bit of Sarah Palin in terms of incoherence and a Ted Talk in terms of evangelism. She’d fly in with these wild ideas for things like, ‘We are going to open an opera in Africa,’ ” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘And you can’t give me an extra $6,000?’ ”

Blouin counters that “success speaks for itself” and that “you’ll always have disgruntled people saying nasty things.

“It depends who you ask. We are the largest platform now. We work very hard. . . Most of my publishers have been with me five to 10 years. I think you have to look at the facts and not what people say about other people.”

Blouin, her media company and her foundation have been involved in at least 24 New York civil and Supreme Court lawsuits. They mostly concern failure to pay creditors and employees. In many of the cases where Blouin or one of her companies appeared as the defendant, the cases have been disposed of or worked out.

Blouin noted she only has one active case at the moment.

“Every organization has disputes, right?” said Fasano. “Some of which we are either bringing the disputed lawsuit against them or they are bringing it against us. . . Certainly anything I have seen over the last few years has been pretty average stuff that has been all solved. Some in favour of us, some in settlement.”

The leaked documents reveal one lawsuit concerning money loaned to Kirkswood Ltd. that allegedly was difficult to get back.

Emigrant Bank Fine Art Finance, a subsidiary of Emigrant Bank that lends money to clients who put up art as collateral, sued Kirkswood for nearly $3 million in early 2015, according to documents.

In early 2015, Mossack Fonseca sent an email to Fasano alerting her to an urgent issue.

On Jan. 23, 2015, Emigrant had filed an affidavit signed by Barbara Chu, Emigrant’s executive vice- president, in the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court as part of an application asking that Kirkswood Ltd. be liquidated.

Emigrant was seeking more than $2.8 million — the balance of an overdue loan, according to the court documents.

Two years before, Emigrant and Kirkswood entered a $4.7-million loan agreement, documents show. The loan was to be repaid by March 31, 2014, and Emigrant alleged payments had been skipped or not properly made.

As a condition of the loan, Kirkswood had agreed to give Emigrant a “security interest” in various works of art owned by the company, documents show.

In June 2014, Emigrant received notice from The Art Loss Register, the world’s largest database of lost and stolen art, that art, which had been listed to protect Emigrant’s security, had been offered for sale at Christie’s auction house in New York.

“On 18 June 2014, Emigrant discovered that Ms. Blouin had led Christie’s to believe that she was the owner of the charged art,” Chu’s affidavit says.

When Christie’s sold the art for $1,975,360, they gave the money to Emigrant, which was put toward Blouin’s loan.

But $2.8 million remained outstanding.

Emigrant sent a letter to Blouin demanding repayment in December 2014, as well as $124,962.20 in interest and legal costs, documents show.

Aside from the “unauthorized sale,” Blouin had only made a payment of $12,729.17 towards what she owes, Chu’s affidavit says.

Emigrant declined to comment for this article.

Blouin and Fasano both said the matter is closed.

Fasano cautioned that Chu’s affidavit is only one side of the story. “That is not necessarily the truth there that it wasn’t paid back in time,” Fasano said.

“We were in the process of paying that back. . . At all times, we were in the process of paying back that loan. We paid back half of it and we just need to pay back the other half of it when it became due. All money has been paid. The matter has been withdrawn.”

Louise Blouin sees expansion to Canada in her future.

Blouin told the Star that her company has “reached out to many people around the world,” specifically Japan, India and Canada, and she has found a “fabulous” person to be its Canadian general manager.

“I have always been a Canadian citizen and I’m proud to be one. I started my first business in Canada. There are a lot of opportunities in Canada,” said Blouin. “I believe more in the foreign policy in Canada, more than in many other countries.”

Blouin plans to spend more time in Canada and, this past winter, she and Kabatoff bought a $5.8-million home in Mont Tremblant that is close to her sister Hélène’s home and the Desmarais clan.

With files from Chris Reynolds