A U.S. subsidiary of the giant Canadian insurance company Fairfax Holdings has donated $1 million to Restore Our Future, the “SuperPAC” boosting Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.
The donation by OdysseyRE has raised questions about whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which opened the floodgates to unlimited SuperPAC donations, applies to foreign-owned firms.
Under Citizens United, the high court removed limits on corporate political spending dating back 103 years to the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt. But it barred foreign companies from the unlimited giving.
The question of U.S. subsidiaries was left unclear. A subcommittee of OdysseyRE’s board of directors, consisting entirely of U.S. citizens, decided on the donation.
“We had no role: The U.S. company is in fact our largest (subsidiary) and they had business reasons for doing it, but we played on role at all,” Paul Rivett, a vice president of Fairfax Holdings, told the Globe and Mail in Toronto.
Peter Lovell, counsel general at OdysseyRE, explained: “Governor Romney has proposed meaningful corporate tax reform that would help level the playing field; consequently, a victory by Governor Romney in November would be beneficial to OdysseyRE.”