South African brothers Marshall and Richard Cooper lived the high life in Canada, funded by ‘gifts’ from a Jersey company established by their father – and KPMG.

He was once the uncontested king of scrap. So large was Marshall Cooper snr empire that Chicks Scrap Metal became a household name. As is customary in that trade most of his scrap was sent abroad.  And, as likely, most of the profits were kept abroad too, well away from the predatory eyes of the South African Revenue Service. 

While few will disagree that death and taxes are best avoided as long as possible, it is less widely accepted that both are ultimately inevitable.

Marshall Cooper appears to have succeeded in keeping the South African taxman in the dark to the end; it is the tax authorities in Canada – to which country he and his family emigrated in the early 1990s – who cottoned on to the elaborate offshore “sham trust” setup where Cooper had hidden his vast untaxed fortune.  And those authorities are now demanding their cruel cut.

Right now, there is another reason why South Africans will be interested in the unhappy unravelling of Cooper’s offshore tax-evasion schemes: they were set up and operated for him by KPMG.

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