PARIS (Reuters) – The National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) said on Tuesday that searches were being carried out at the premises of five banking and financial establishments located in Paris and La Défense as part of an investigation into tax evasion and money laundering. tax fraud.
A spokesperson for the PNF confirmed that the establishments targeted were Société Générale, BNP Paribas, Exane, Natixis and HSBC after an article published in Le Monde.
Contacted by Reuters, a spokesperson for Societe Generale confirmed that a search had been underway in the group’s offices since this morning and declined to comment.
The other establishments targeted did not respond to Reuters’ requests immediately.
The searches are part of five preliminary investigations opened in December 2021 on the count of aggravated money laundering of aggravated tax evasion and for some of aggravated tax evasion, relating to the so-called “CumCum” fraud scheme.
This fraud consists of a foreign shareholder of a company listed in France temporarily transferring, around the date of payment of the dividend, the securities he holds to a French banking establishment, in order to avoid payment of the withholding tax source applied to the payment of this dividend.
(Written by Blandine Hénault, with contributions from Tassilo Hummel, Sudip Kar Gupta and Silvia Aloisi, editing by Kate Entringer)
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