The Swiss banking establishment was sentenced in mid-March to a heavy fine in a case of carbon tax fraud. Julius Baer disputes the facts and appealed.
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The Swiss bank disputes the facts.
The Swiss bank Julius Baer was sentenced in mid-March, in Paris, to a fine of 5 million euros (some 5.15 million francs) for aggravated money laundering in 2008, within the framework of a case of fraud carbon tax called “Twilight”, we learned Thursday, from a judicial source. In this 146 million euro component of the VAT “scam of the century” on the pollution rights market, twelve people were sentenced to terms of up to 10 years in prison in 2017 and 2019.
The Turkish bank Garanti Bankasi had been fined 8 million euros. At the end of the investigations, Julius Baer had also been sent back to the criminal court but her indictment had been canceled for a question of procedure. His case had been severed and the bank was eventually sent back to the 32nd Correctional Chamber to stand trial on its own.
“The bank disputes the accusations”
After a trial on December 16, 2021, Julius Baer was sentenced on March 14, 2022, to a fine of 5 million euros, as well as to pay 400,000 euros in damages to the French State. “The bank is contesting the charges once morest it and has therefore appealed the decision,” his lawyer Thierry Marembert told AFP. “She recalls that these are very old and isolated facts. The investigation itself, which lasted almost a decade, has obviously been mentioned in financial communication for a long time,” he added.
The bank had to pay a deposit of 3.75 million euros during the investigations. The banking establishment was condemned for not having carried out the necessary checks on an account created in February 2008, within its branch in Singapore, in the name of a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, Montibely Investors, according to the decision consulted by AFP.
The account had been opened for a Franco-Israeli client, via a Tel Aviv business provider. An arrangement “devoid of distinct economic reality” which was “only intended to serve to disburse VAT fraud operations”, underlines the court.
Massive VAT scam
Until it was closed by its beneficiary in October 2008, this account was credited, then debited for around 1.9 million euros. “By refraining from any elementary verification, both in the opening of an account presenting many astonishing or even atypical elements, and during the abnormal functioning of this account, (the bank) showed patent negligence and deliberate, making possible or even favoring the offense of money laundering”, wrote the court in particular.
The “Twilight” file is one of the many branches of the gigantic VAT scam on the CO2 market, which in total cost 1.6 billion euros to the French tax authorities. The scheme was simple: buy tax-free pollution rights in a European country, resell them in France at a price including VAT, then invest the funds in a new operation, without ever paying the VAT back to the State.
