The Ministry of Economy and Finance was searched Thursday in Paris as part of an open judicial information “initially” on suspicions of real estate money laundering targeting the Russian billionaire Souleiman Kerimov, said the prosecution, confirming information from the world. French justice has been investigating this oligarch for years. According to the daily, investigators are interested in an agreement concluded between the Russian and the French tax administration in 2019.
The case had started in Nice in 2014 on a banal hideout from the narcotics brigade. Movements suspected of liquid money were identified and the track dates back to the Russian oligarch, in particular concerning the purchase in 2008 of the villa “yesterday” in Antibes for 35 million euros, an under-declared amount compared to the price of 127 million really paid according to the investigators. Notary, real estate agent, lawyer, administrator: many local players had been indicted and are still some today.
“The searches should make it possible to understand the tax system” having affected luxury villas on the Côte d’Azur, “for an issue estimated at more than 38 million euros,” said the public prosecutor. These villas were “declared under lending to the names in order to hide the real owner of Russian nationality”. According to Le Monde, the search took place at the headquarters of the Directorate General of Public Finance. The judicial information is educated in the national jurisdiction in charge of organized crime affairs (Junalco).
According to Nikita Sichov, his lawyer, the tax negotiation with the French administration was based in particular on a “restructuring” which consisted in making the villas of Cap d’Antibes bought by companies held by Gulnara Kerimova, the daughter of Souleïman Kerimov, “who has since settled an annual sum of 4 million” of taxes on real estate.
The investigations relaunched in 2022?
With an estimated heritage of more than $ 16 billion by the 2020 Forbes ranking, Souleïman Kerimov, from Daguestan, is one of the richest men in Russia. He appears on the list of people under sanctions of the European Union whose assets must be frozen since the triggering of the Russian offensive in Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
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In November 2017, the billionaire’s arrest at his jet descent to Nice had been strongly criticized by Moscow. The prosecution then estimated that the amount of clandestine money entered into France was between 500 million and 750 million euros. His lawyers had managed to cancel his indictment. In August 2022, the Nice prosecutor’s office confirmed that it had received, in June of the same year, a tracfin report concerning him, likely to relaunch investigations.