headquarters Five banks became the subject of court filings on Tuesday. The National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNJ) reported Paris and its environs as part of an aggravated tax evasion investigation.
operations It was chaired by 16 French judges and more than 150 attended researchers, and six German prosecutors detailed the PNJ in a statement, under a European judicial cooperation procedure.
According to the news of the newspaper ‘Le Monde’, which put forward the news, The banks investigated are Société Générale, BNP Paribas and its subsidiaries Exane, Natixis and HSBC.
Authorities are trying to verify an alleged tax evasion amounting to several billion euros a year, By a method popularly known as “FridayFriday,” according to Le Monde.
Research from December 2021
This scam occurs shareholder of a listed company France but temporarily lends with tax residency abroad, He gives his securities to a French bank around the ex-dividend date.
This allows you Avoiding the withholding tax imposed by the French tax authorities on tax residents in another country for these dividends.
This is because dividends on securities held by French banks are virtually tax-free. After the withholding is exceeded, The lending of the shares is finalized and the titles officially return to the hands of their owners.
Because monitoring such operations is complex, large volumes of shares bought by banks and they are selling every day, this practice went unnoticed until the first complaint.
alleged fraud It came to light in 2018, and the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation in December 2021. for aggravated tax evasion and aggravated money laundering.