The Paris Criminal Court will render its decision on April 20 in the trial of the former president of Medef Ernest-Antoine Seillire and thirteen other people, suspected of colossal tax fraud in 2007 within the Wendel company.
The prosecution requested four years’ imprisonment, including two closed, against Mr. Seillire and five years, including three closed, against the former chairman of the management board of the investment company Jean-Bernard Lafonta.
Sentences ranging from suspended prison sentences were requested for eleven former executives and a former tax lawyer. A fine of 37,500 euros and professional bans have also been demanded.
In the last hours of the trial, which began on January 17, the lawyers for the fourteen defendants called for an acquittal, one after another, denouncing extremely violent requisitions and arguing that the executives had never intended to evade taxes.
At issue in this case of dizzying amounts: a profit-sharing program called Solfur, which had enabled members of Wendel’s management team to recover in May 2007 a total of 315 million euros in securities, without being taxed.
To distribute these capital gains, in particular linked to the soaring Wendel share price, the executives had adhered to an ultra-sophisticated arrangement designed, according to the prosecution, to abuse a legal regime which deferred the payment of tax. .
For the defense, on the contrary, the Solfur arrangement was in line with the case law of the time: the executives were convinced that they were complying with the law, relying in particular on the opinion of a reputable tax law firm .
President of the CNPF which became Medef (1998-2005), Baron Ernest-Antoine Seillire, 84, heir to the Wendel dynasty, was at the time chairman of the company’s supervisory board. He had won 79 million euros.
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Jean-Bernard Lafonta, 60, the main beneficiary of the operation with 116 million euros, was tried for tax evasion but also complicit in that of his co-defendants, suspected of having piloted and imposed the assembly on his executives.
With the arrival of the financial crisis in 2008, the assembly had finally proved disastrous, told executives at the helm.
All Solfur participants were notified at the end of 2010 of a tax adjustment of 240 million euros. After years of litigation, almost all of them have settled a negotiated amount – and much less – to the public treasury.
The bank JP Morgan Chase, initially sent to trial in this case for complicity in tax evasion, agreed in September to pay a fine of 25 million euros via a court settlement to close the proceedings.