The CEO of the jewelry company Dinh Van, pinged by the Duba Papers in 2018, was sentenced on Tuesday to fifteen months in prison suspended and fined 600,000 euros for having concealed millions of dividends in tax havens.
During an appearance hearing on prior recognition of guilt (CRPC) at the Paris court, a sort of French plea, Frdric Laporte admitted the charges, in particular laundering of tax fraud and laundering of aggravated tax fraud.
He accepted the sentence negotiated with the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), which the judge, Alain Alufrom, then approved.
This case is part of the investigations launched by the PNF in the spring of 2019, following the revelations of L’Obs on the existence of a vast network for laundering tax fraud on an international scale which started the early 2000s around the Helin group based in the United Arab Emirates.
According to the president of the court, who briefly recalled during the hearing the charges against Mr. Laporte, the latter concealed from the tax authorities the dividends received between 2008 and 2012, by resorting to the tax evasion system put in place by the Helin group, founded by the Belgian prince Henri de Cro.
Mr. Laporte also used pre-loaded bank cards to withdraw the hidden money in cash.
He is one of the taxpayers who came spontaneously to the tax authorities to regularize their situation (after the scandal). There was a desire to comply with the law, said prosecutor Jean-Baptiste Bougerol.
The administration valued the amount of rights luds about 6million euros. The overall tax adjustment inflicted by Bercy amounts to 9.4 million, which have been settled in their quasi-entirety, reported Mr. Bougerol.
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Mr. Laporte, 75, therefore paid the tax authorities several million euros more than the sums he would have paid if he had declared the dividends affected in due time and in accordance with the law.
The recourse to the companies of the Helin group will have been uninteresting, according to the magistrate. This is the goal of all our action.
The defense lawyer, Me Marie-Laure Barr, also pointed out that the operation had been uninteresting for her client, who also accepted the settlement of sums over prescribed years and on dividends that he had not had. touches.
A few taxpayers pinged in the context of the Duba Papers have already appeared in the fall of 2021 in the CRPC, and others could follow.