#005 - Brookfield and Privatization in Latin America, with Livi Gerbase
Description
You’ve probably heard about Brookfield’s use of tax havens in countries like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, especially since Mark Carney became Prime Minister of Canada. But what exactly are these tax havens being used for?
Livi Gerbase from the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) joins Millennial Moron to discuss ways that Brookfield (and other Canadian pension fund managers) is leveraging tax havens and tax-advantaged programs to privatize public utilities in Latin America, with case studies of Isagen in Colombia and BRK Ambiental in Brazil.
We discuss the decline in capital investment into infrastructure, increases in prices to consumers, stagnant wages for workers, and the massive increase in debt charges to these former public utilities - which are potentially being used as a profit-shifting scheme to avoid paying taxes to the local governments where these utilities are located.
Paper on Isagen in Colombia
https://cictar.org/all-research/isagen/eng
Paper on BRK Ambiental and Privatization of Water Services
https://cictar.org/all-research/brk-ambiental-en
Livi Gerbase on X
CICTAR
Pension Funds Fuel Land Grabs in Brazil (GRAIN):
https://grain.org/en/article/5575-pension-funds-fuel-land-grabs-in-brazil
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