(Nice) Part of the fortune of the princely family of Monaco was placed in tax havens, reveals an investigation recently published in the French daily Le Monde which is based on documents from the former administrator of the property of the Crown fell from grace.
Already shaken by several scandals surrounding the real estate market, the dismissal of Claude Palmero, administrator of princely property and former close friend of Albert II, which turned into a legal war, the extremely wealthy micro-state of the Côte d’ Azur is the subject of a new storm after this series of articles in Le Monde on the management of the Grimaldi fortune.
“Offshore companies were actually created in Panama in 1984 during the time of Rainier III”, the father of Albert II, confirmed to AFP Me Jean-Michel Darrois, the prince’s lawyer, adding that Claude Palmero had been asked “several times” to regularize the situation, “which he did not do”.
“Since Mr. Palmero was replaced, all of this is being liquidated,” says the lawyer. According to him, Mr. Palmero had nevertheless stopped for several years paying the management fees of three companies located in the British Virgin Islands, another tax haven, leading to the de facto deregistration of these companies and difficulties in reestablishing the princely family in its rights. According to Me Darrois, these offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands were created before 2002, also during the time of Rainier III.
“Claude Palmero has never done anything without the knowledge of his principals, quite the contrary, it has always been in perfect agreement with them and in their strictest interest,” retorts Me Marie-Alix Canu-Bernard, one of the deposed administrator’s advisors.
These offshore investments would have been decided to protect the Grimaldis’ fortune from possible ill-intentioned glances or the curiosity of the press, say sources close to the matter, the interest on a tax level appearing limited to Monaco whose nationals are not taxed.
Legal battle
In June 2023, Mr. Palmero was dismissed from his position, asked to immediately leave his office installed in a wing of the princely palace, on the Rock, a bolt from the blue for this sixty-year-old who had managed the family’s fortune since 2001. princely.
Since then, Mr. Palmero has continued to challenge his ouster before the Monegasque courts, but without success. A few days ago, he filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, claiming to have been deprived of a fair trial.
A complaint was also filed against the princely family for “abuse of weakness, attempted extortion and theft” by Mr.e Marie-Alix Canu-Bernard and Christophe Llorca, Mr. Palmero’s lawyers.
For their part, the Grimaldis filed a complaint for “breach of trust” and “theft of documents” against their ex-financer.
Le Monde’s revelations are based on Mr. Palmero’s personal notebooks in which, according to the daily, the latter scrupulously noted the meetings he had with the prince to settle the affairs of the Principality and particularly those concerning the management of the personal fortune of the Grimaldi family, since the accession to the throne of Albert II in 2005.
Le Monde claims that Mr. Palmero was concerned about certain expenses of members of the princely family, including the prince’s sisters and wife.
More transparency
These personal notebooks were seized last year as part of another investigation carried out by the Monegasque justice system. While the newspaper Monaco-Matin accused Mr. Palmero of “great unpacking” after the Le Monde series, the ex-administrator’s lawyers retorted that the latter “unpacked nothing”, emphasizing that he had at on the contrary reaffirmed in the French daily that “these notebooks are confidential and are not intended to be shown”.
These tensions occur in the context of a war raging in the Principality over the real estate market. According to official figures, the 88 new apartments sold in 2022 in Monaco reached the astronomical sum of 1.2 billion euros.
Mr. Palmero suspects the main local entrepreneur, Patrice Pastor, whose ambitions he wanted to put a stop to, of having influenced the Prince to separate from him.
These revelations come at a time when Monaco, for a year, has been under pressure from the Council of Europe to adopt a more transparent operation in the fight against money laundering and corruption, raising the risk that this place financial sector finds itself placed on a gray list of countries subject to reinforced surveillance by international organizations.
In this context, the Principality announced on Friday the appointment of Sophie Thevenoux at the head of a “Monegasque Financial Security Authority”, an organization which recently replaced the old structure dedicated to the fight against money laundering.