Consulting firm McKinsey, accused of tax optimization by a Senate commission of inquiry, “will pay what he owes”, said Gabriel Attal, government spokesperson, Friday, March 25, on franceinfo. The company’s French entities are believed to have paid no corporate tax between 2011 and 2020 in France. Recalling that an investigation is “In progress”Gabriel Attal testified to “absolute determination” of the government in tax optimization cases. Citing the examples of Google and Apple he added: “When we noticed that companies were doing tax optimization like these (…) we imposed fines (…) our hand never trembled”.
Covid-19: “There has always been recourse to consulting firms”, says Gabriel Attal, while a report from the Senate shows that consulting expenditure exceeded one billion euros during the five-year term. pic.twitter.com/fY9Av0K4oj
— franceinfo (@franceinfo) March 25, 2022
The government spokesperson also acknowledged that there had been, during the health crisis, “an increase in the number of expert firms used by the State”, in particular to support the deployment of the vaccination campaign. But according to him, it was “an exceptional situation” as a goal “to be as fast as possible and therefore to mobilize forces, experts, skills outside the State to come and support the effort”.
“This does not mean that the use of experts can or must be done without a framework”, nuanced Gabriel Attal. “The President of the Republic had the opportunity to remind him, it must be done sparingly”, argued the government spokesman and “for skills or missions for which one does not have the skills” in ministries.
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According to the Senate report, spending on advice from ministries jumped from 379.1 million euros in 2018 to 893.9 million euros in 2021. Gabriel Attal called this increase an increase “punctual”, “over the year 2021”. According to him, the use of consulting firms “in the first years of the quinquennium corresponded to what we saw in the previous quinquennium” and one “reduction target has even been set for 2022″.
Gabriel Attal assured that the executive had communicated all the information it had on this subject with “absolute transparency”adding that the objective “is obviously to return to a usual framework of recourse to cabinets”.