CINAR Corporation

The Cookie Jar Group, commonly known as simply Cookie Jar and formerly known as CINAR, was a Canadian animation studio, media production and distribution company that existed from 1976 until it was folded into DHX Media, now WildBrain, on December 25, 2014. The company was first established in 1976 as CINAR Films Inc., a Montreal-based studio that was heavily involved in children's entertainment. Its business model, which included the licensing of its properties into educational markets, had a significant impact on its success; by 1999, CINAR held CDN$1.5 billion of the overall children's television market.

In the 2000s, CINAR became the subject of multiple business scandals, including accusations that the company had used offshore accounts to transfer money out of the company, had plagiarized the concept of one of its series, and had obfuscated the involvement of U.S. screenwriters in its productions in order to continue receiving Canadian tax credits for domestic productions. Over a decade later, these scandals would result in criminal charges, convictions, and fines for four suspects, which included two executives at the company, co-founder Ronald A. Weinberg and chief financial officer Hasanain Panju.

CINAR was sold in 2004 for $190 million to a group led by Michael Hirsh, the founder of Nelvana, and changed its name to Cookie Jar Group. In 2008, they agreed to acquire DIC Entertainment, expanding its library. On August 20, 2012, DHX Media announced its intent to acquire Cookie Jar, in a deal that would make DHX the largest independent owner of children's television programming, and by December 25, 2014, Cookie Jar was folded into DHX Media.

History

As CINAR

After their meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1976, Micheline Charest and Ronald A. Weinberg organized an event for a women's film festival and worked at distributing foreign films to U.S. theatres. The couple moved to New York City and formed CINAR, a film and television distribution company.

In 1984, CINAR changed their focus from media distribution to production and moved operations to Montreal, Quebec, where they concentrated on family-oriented television programming, including ''The Little Lulu Show'', ''Animal Crackers'', ''Emily of New Moon'', ''Mona the Vampire'', and ''The Wombles'', as well as the English and French dubs of the Japanese series ''Adventures of the Little Koala'', ''Ronin Warriors'', '' The Adventures of Albert and Sidney'', and ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'', the Spanish television series ''The World of David the Gnome'', and the English dub of ''Ultraseven''. As a production company, CINAR was also involved in the work of ''Are You Afraid of the Dark?'', ''A Bunch of Munsch'', ''The Busy World of Richard Scarry'', ''Madeline'' (specials 2 to 6), '' The Real Story of Happy Birthday to You'', ''The Country Mouse and the City Mouse Adventures'', ''Space Cases'', and its most well-known works, ''Arthur'', ''Zoboomafoo'', and ''Caillou''.

The firm became a public company in September 1993.

On November 1, 1996, CINAR announced that they would purchase the programming library and animation unit of the London-based FilmFair from the Caspian Group for $10.5 million. After the deal closed, CINAR reopened FilmFair and utilized its acquired catalogue to launch a dedicated London-based European production and distribution studio - CINAR Europe in March 1997. The aim of the new subsidiary was to produce, with FilmFair; revival series based on existing properties including ''The Wombles'' and ''The Adventures of Paddington Bear'', and bring the existing FilmFair catalogue to the world. Following CINAR's financial issues and the scandal, CINAR Europe was put up for sale in September 2001 but was closed in February 2002. The closure led to CINAR's European partners, like Alphanim, to find other studios to co-produce shows with.

By 1999, CINAR boasted annual revenues of $150 million (CAD) and owned about $1.5 billion (CAD) of the children's television market. In February 1999, CINAR acquired the film library of Salt Lake City-based production company Leucadia Film Corporation from the Leucadia National Corporation, with the company's acquisition of 55 titles in the ''WonderWorks'' library following at the end of the year. CINAR's rights to the Leucadia library and ''WonderWorks'' specials were purchased by Feature Films for Families in 2003.

CINAR also owned the dubbing studio Fandango Studios in Mexico City.

Scandal

CINAR received over $50 million in tax benefits from the Canadian government. However, in 1999, the company was accused of falsely crediting Canadians for work done by Americans. Hélène Charest, the sister of Quebec Liberal Party leader Jean Charest, was listed on over 100 episodes that she did not write.

The success of Charest, Weinberg, and CINAR ended in March 2000, when an internal audit revealed that about $167 million (CAD) was invested into Bahamian bank accounts without the board members' approval. CINAR had also paid U.S. screenwriters for work while continuing to accept federal grants and tax credits for the production of Canadian content. The names of Canadian citizens (generally non-writers connected to CINAR, including Charest's sister Helene) were credited for the works. While the province of Quebec did not file criminal charges, CINAR denied any wrongdoing, choosing instead to pay a settlement to Canadian and Quebec tax authorities of $17.8 million (CAD) and another $2.6 million (CAD) to Telefilm Canada, a Canadian federal funding agency. The value of CINAR's stock plummeted, and the company was soon delisted.

There was some speculation that Hasanain Panju, CFO was the mastermind behind the investment scheme along with John Xanthoudakis of Norshield Investment Group and Lino Matteo of Mount Real Corporation. It was claimed that Charest and Weinberg (and later Panju) used CINAR as a 'piggy bank' and schemed to transfer funds out from the company through a series of complicated transactions to their own offshore holding companies.

In 2001, as part of a settlement agreement with the Commission des Valeurs Mobilières du Québec (Quebec Securities Commission), Charest and Weinberg agreed to pay $1 million each and were banned from serving in the capacity of directors or officers at any publicly traded Canadian company for five years. There was no admission of guilt and none of the allegations has been proven in court. Charest never lived to see a possible outcome, as she died on April 14, 2004.

On March 10, 2011, Weinberg was arrested for securities fraud

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases