TORONTO – Following the explosive “Panama Papers” leak, detailing the offshore accounts of high profile billionaires worldwide, Dragon’s Den star Kevin O’Leary has been caught starting a rumour that he is included among the elite tax-cheats.
Reports have surfaced that Kevin O’Leary has reportedly spent the past week calling calling, e-mailing, and tweeting at various news outlets, in an effort to start rumours that he has money stashed offshore in Panama. The self-described billionaire, who has recently made headlines as the most-vocal and least-qualified contender for the Federal Tory leadership, has reportedly offered little evidence to support this rumour.
Reached for comment, Mr. O’Leary insisted that he had “absolutely no knowledge of any super-cool rumours of jet-setting millionaire – or possibly billionaire – bad boy Kevin O’Leary being in the Panama Papers.”
Several Canadian journalists have refuted this denial by O’Leary – a man whose estimated personal worth is $300 million – including The National’s Peter Mansbridge. “Since the Panama Papers story broke, I keep getting these voicemail messages saying ‘You know who I heard keeps his billions and billions of dollars in Panama – Kevin O’Leary.’” A visibly annoyed Mansbridge continued, “On one of the messages you can clearly hear O’Leary’s wife in the background asking him to come down to dinner. It’s just sad.”
Industry insiders have speculated that the true cause of this latest “scandal” is Mr. O’Leary’s excess of rumour-propagating free time. This could be due to his recent departure from CBC’s The Lang And O’Leary Report, the hiatus of his American TV show, Shark Tank or the failure and sale of O’Leary Funds, a mutual fund company where O’Leary was in no way legally authorized to manage or invest other people’s money.
Reached for comment, associates at Mossack Fonseca, the corporate service provider implicated in the Panama Papers leak, were firm. “Our policy is to refuse to comment on anything to do with this news story. But in the case of Mr. O’Leary, we will make an exception. Mossack Fonseca has never, and will never, conduct any business with that self-promoting Canadian reality TV “star”.” They then added, “Please make sure that ”star” is written in quote marks. Thank you.”
Another unnamed associate at Mossack Fonseca was uncharacteristically happy to discuss O’Leary. “I wouldn’t even know the man’s name, but he’s been calling us ever since the news story, begging us to launder his Dragon’s Den royalty cheques.” The unnamed associate was then overcome with laughter, adding, “The kind of amounts he was talking about – we literally use funds like that as toilet paper in the employee washroom! And in Canadian funds? Get out of here.”
At press time, Kevin O’Leary was calling the Globe and Mail to insist that “billionaire Kevin O’Leary is secretly the masked vigilante known as Batman.”
