Polygamy, human trafficking and child abuse accusations never stuck, but the leader of a polygamous community in westernmost Canada has been found guilty of tax wrongdoings.
In a ruling released Thursday, a Canadian tax court said Winston Blackmore, leader of a community in Bountiful, British Columbia that practices a fundamentalist form of Mormonism, underreported his income by more than Can$1.68 million ($1.6 million).
In addition to back taxes, he was ordered to pay a Can$148,983 fine for gross negligence in preparing his tax returns.
Blackmore's tax trial last year offered an unprecedented look at life inside the secretive community, which has been the subject of several investigations for polygamy, child abuse and child bride trafficking over the past decade.
The case centered around an obscure section of Canada's tax code originally designed to allow Hutterite colonies to divvy up income among members of the community for tax purposes.
Blackmore argued that it should be applied to his group.
But Judge Diane Campbell ruled that the Bountiful community did not meet the definition of "congregation" under the act, which requires that individuals not own property and that they live and work communally.
Even if Blackmore had been succesful in meeting the test, Campbell said he failed to indicate who would qualify as members of the congregation, which broke into two rival sects after infighting and saw members quit amid abuse allegations.
"It becomes a question of 'who is in and who is out' as a member of the community in respect to each taxation year in order to ascertain the group to which such tax treatment might apply," Campbell said in her decision.
Blackmore could not be reached for comment.
Residents of the 60-year-old Bountiful community in a remote mountainous region of British Columbia near the US border are affiliated with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
In the United States, the church's "prophet" Warren Jeffs has been convicted of being an accomplice to the rape of a minor in Utah, and other charges related to the sect's practice of marrying young girls to church leaders.
Successive provincial governments have talked about possible charges against sect leaders in Canada for almost 20 years, but did not act, as the charge is legally controversial in Canada, where religious freedom is constitutionally protected.
They pointed to legal opinions said that Canada's polygamy law is unconstitutional and unenforceable, however a British Columbia court ruled in 2011 that limits on multiple marriages are justified if they "advance concerns that are pressing and substantial in a free and democratic society."
Justice Robert Bauman in that constitutional reference case also noted that "polygamy is associated with numerous harms."
Blackmore told the tax court earlier this year that he had 21 wives and had fathered 67 children. A day later, he admitted that he'd forgotten one of his wives in the tally.
He described a tight-knit group that grows, raises or hunts its own food, and runs a barter economy -- trading labor for chickens with one neighbor, for example.
Blackmore and another man, James Oler, were previously charged with polygamy in 2009 but the case was thrown out.
That led to a review of Canada's law against polygamy, which is still ongoing.
http://news.yahoo.com/canadian-polygamist-found-guilty-tax-fraud-174048403.html
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