Chief Liberal Party fundraiser tied to millions of loan to offshore trust.

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Meeshika Sharma
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Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, right, chats with Stephen Bronfman, the party's chief fundraiser, at a barn party in St. Peters Bay, P.E.I. on Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2013. The Liberals are holding their summer caucus retreat in nearby Georgetown. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

Newly discovered documents from the Paradise papers show the Liberal Party's top fundraiser, Stephen Bronfman, was directly linked to companies that were owed millions by an offshore Cayman Islands trust well into the 2000s — despite his strong denials he had any involvement in the trust after 1998.

The documents show how a Delaware-based company closely connected to the Montreal-based financier was owed $8 million from the Kolber Trust, set up for former Liberal Sen. Leo Kolber and his family in the no-tax Cayman Islands.

After the release of docs, Bronfman said in a statement that his only connection to the Kolber Trust was a $5-million loan in 1997 that was quickly repaid within months.

The statement read, "Stephen Bronfman had no other direct or indirect involvement whatsoever in the Kolber Trust."

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Newly discovered documents from corporate registries, the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States and the Paradise Papers database show that Bronfman was a key "member/shareholder" of Claridge Israel LLC— a Delaware company that was owed more than $8 million by the Kolber Trust.

The Kolber Trust was set up in 1991 for Leo Kolber, Stephen Bronfman's godfather.

Revelations that Trudeau's chief Liberal fundraiser was linked to an offshore trust rippled through Ottawa two weeks ago, after several national and international media outlets reported Stephen Bronfman was linked to the Cayman Islands tax scheme.

The story was part of the Paradise Papers, the massive leak of offshore financial data obtained by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

publive-imagePrime Minister Justin Trudeau quickly came to the defence of Bronfman, a longtime family friend who led the fundraising efforts for Trudeau's leadership bid and the financially and politically successful 2015 federal election campaign.

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