A Canadian news outlet has targeted a billionaire family for its use of “an offshore insurance company that allowed them to move millions of dollars in profits out of Canada and into the ‘tax haven’ of Bermuda”.

But the extensive article refers to no illegality in the matter.

CBC News and Radio-Canada, citing “leaked” documents, said New Brunswick’s billionaire Irving family owned the Bermuda captive insurer F.M.A. Ltd, which sold insurance premiums to Irving companies in Canada and Bermuda for their marine vessels.

The documents are from confidential files stolen from law firm Appleby, in what became known as the Paradise Papers.

The report published Thursday said F.M.A. then reinsured major risks to those vessels by paying lower premiums to a non-Irving reinsurance company based in Bermuda.

It said company records show F.M.A. accumulated almost $13.4 million in untaxed income between 1973, when it was incorporated, and 2001.

The article said the company records revealed details of the complex multibillion-dollar financial apparatus — including a $3 billion tax-free trust — that corporate patriarch K.C. Irving created in Bermuda over several decades.

The report says while the company was closed down, there were other corporate structures established by the family company.