The National Financial Prosecutor’s Office confirms to franceinfo that it opened an investigation on July 1 for “organized laundering of corruption offences, embezzlement of public funds and aggravated tax evasion”. The investigation was entrusted to theCentral Office for the Suppression of Serious Financial Crime. Five months after the intensification of the war in Ukraine, this investigation follows the complaint filed last May by the association Transparency International France, concerning Russian assets in France.
This survey aims to understand under what conditions certain Russian oligarchs were able to accumulate real estate worth several tens of millions of euros in France, between 2003 and 2018, on the Côte d’Azur, the Basque coast, the west of Paris or in ski resorts in the Alps. Businessmen, senior civil servants, billionaires are targeted by this investigation.
Justice can now trigger the seizure and confiscation of property. However, the open investigation does not relate to concealment, which excludes the French intermediaries who would have helped the oligarchs to invest.
Last May, this association announced that it had filed a complaint against X for money laundering, non-justification of resources, concealment and complicity, “in order to denounce the system of capture of the Russian state and national wealth by businessmen and senior officials close to Vladimir Putin”.
A “system”, which, according to the association, “extends its ramifications to France, in the real estate sector in particular, due to a lack of vigilance from intermediaries”. Transparency International then indicated that “The ambition of the sanctions measures against Russia and the first announcements of freezing come up against the difficulties of identifying the assets of the people sanctioned. In France, as elsewhere, the tracking of the assets of the oligarchs and those close to the Russian regime is stalled. “
The announcement of the opening of this investigation therefore delights the association, says its lawyer, Me Amélie Lefebvre. “It is a great satisfaction, there is a considerable work that has been done to collect, to analyze a whole series of data which are now available in open sourceshe welcomes. This is all the more good news since this investigation will make it possible to characterize money laundering operations and that responsibilities may be sought.“