This Tuesday, March 28 is synonymous with a vast tax audit operation for the French administration. Several searches are underway on Tuesday in five French banking establishments, in Paris and La Défense, on suspicion of aggravated tax evasion, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) said on Tuesday, confirming information from the Monde.
These operations intervene in the context of five preliminary investigations opened on December 16 and 17, 2021 on the count of aggravated money laundering of aggravated tax evasion, and for some of aggravated tax evasion, relating to the fraud scheme known as “CumCum“”, a tax scheme on dividends, said the PNF.
« The ongoing operations, which required several months of preparation, are being carried out by 16 magistrates from the PNF and more than 150 investigators from the financial judicial investigation service (SEJF), in the presence of six German prosecutors from the Cologne public prosecutor’s office involved in the European judicial cooperation framework “, added the public ministry.
Société Générale, BNP Paribas, Exane (a subsidiary of BNP), Natixis and HSBC are targeted, according to The world. A spokesperson for Société Générale confirmed to AFP that a search had been underway at the group’s headquarters since Tuesday morning, without knowing what the purpose was. The other banks did not respond to AFP immediately.
The sequel to the “CumCum” affair
In 2018, a group of sixteen media revealed these suspicions of giant tax fraud via the “CumEx Files”. The so-called “CumCum” practice in financial jargon consists of escaping the tax on dividends which must in principle be paid by foreign holders of shares in listed French companies.
To take advantage of the scheme, these owners of shares, small savers or large investment funds, might lend their securities to a bank for a short period, at the time of the payment of the dividend. Once the dividend has been paid, the bank then gives the securities and the dividends to its owner.
Thus, the official beneficiary of the dividends was none other than the bank, which for its part is virtually exempt from tax. Thanks to this financial arrangement, the owner of shares therefore escapes taxation on dividends. According to the CumEx Files, the banks would have played a role of intermediary, while taking a commission from the holders of shares.
If the Parliament voted and put in place an “anti-CumCum shield” shortly following the publication of the survey, the tax losses for the French treasury would be very significant. The amount that escaped the French tax authorities by this method, initially estimated at 55 billion euros, had been significantly increased in 2021 by the consortium, rising to 140 billion euros over twenty years. The world moreover estimates the estimates of tax losses for the French State between 400 million euros and 4 billion euros per year.
A complaint at the origin of the ongoing investigations
According to the prosecution, these investigations (which led to the searches, editor’s note) follow for some a complaint », deposited at the end of 2018 by a collective « Organized Citizens “around the boss of the PS deputies, Boris Vallaud, “ or to a compulsory denunciation of the tax administration ”, which would date according to The world end of 2021.
The daily also states that the General Directorate of Public Finance (DGFip) “has carried out its first tax adjustments at the end of 2021 “regarding some of these banks” for sums of tens or even hundreds of millions of euros “. Asked by AFP, the DGFip did not comment. Neither customs nor Bercy had responded immediately either.
(With AFP)
