A large-scale fraud was brought to light by investigators from the Central Office for the Suppression of Major Financial Crime (OCRGDF). Five people, aged 24 to 25, were indicted on Wednesday, December 15, in Paris, for covert work and organized money laundering, reports Le Parisien. Via a disbursement system with false invoices, they would have laundered no less than several tens of millions of euros.
The alert was given last September by a man specializing in the opening of companies. For several months, he had been asked by members of the Indo-Pakistani community to open companies. “And regularly on the papers, above the names of the various managers, the same photos are recycled”, specifies in Parisian a source close to the file.
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Investigators managed to identify the head of a network, the head of six painting and cleaning companies, as well as four accomplices. They would have succeeded in developing a montage around real construction companies. The money received was transferred to the accounts of fictitious companies which generated false invoices. The money then went to various accounts abroad before returning to France and the money was withdrawn in cash. And it is with this cash that the workers were paid, without any employer contributions being paid.
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In total, nearly 37 taxi companies, 85 professional bank accounts and 107 individual accounts were discovered. As for the transfers, they passed through accounts in Spain, Italy, Poland and Lithuania. Some of the suspects arrested were already known to the courts for concealment of theft, covert work and organized gang fraud. 335,000 euros were seized by the police. Placed in custody in Nanterre, the head of the network admitted the facts.
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