on the trail of tax evaders

M6 – SUNDAY OCTOBER 20 AT 9:10 P.M. – INVESTIGATION

The magazine starts in thriller mode. A car from the BRI (the anti-gang brigade) crosses Paris at full speed, the trunk full of bags of banknotes seized by anti-fraud colleagues, for an amount of some 2 million euros. Destination: the Public Treasury.

With “Forbidden Zone”, M6 does not skimp on the staging to compete with “Complément d’investigation” and “Envoyé Spécial”, the two flagship investigative programs from France 2, which hit where it hurts in the management of public affairs.

So here, this Sunday, is a report intended to “to question”says Aurore Belser, the editor-in-chief of the show presented by Ophélie Meunier: Tax fraud: these billions that escape the State… and the French. The investigation, carried out by the Tony Comiti Productions agency, tracks down these fraudsters who would cause between 80 and 100 billion euros of public money to evaporate each year!

Darty’s scheme

At a time when the Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, is looking for all the resources to clean up the country’s finances, there is no doubt that this explosive subject will be at the top of his pile in Matignon, as in Bercy. “Unlike many countries, France does not have any rigorous assessment of tax fraud”noted the Court of Auditors in November 2023, in a citizens’ initiative report.

In recent years, the State has certainly stepped up its fight, obtaining 15 billion in recoveries in 2023. But “this is still only a drop in the bucket compared to the scale of the phenomenon”says the report, which has infiltrated these professions for which “concealing one’s income to avoid taxes is an old and uninhibited practice…”

Highlight of the 90 minutes: Darty. The famous “contract of trust” would have “lead in the wing”quips the voiceover. A journalist, with a hidden camera, poses as an import-export specialist wishing to buy in bulk and pay in cash for televisions, household appliances, smartphones, etc. for amounts well in excess of the 1,000 euros imposed by the law since 2015 to prevent money laundering. “With great pleasure, we do this all the time”replies the director of a Darty store in Ile-de-France, in 2021. The trick to make cash payment “untraceable”? The multiplication of invoices of 1,000 euros for Darty gift cards…

The media were put on the trail of this “open secret” by an employee of the company, Haziz Faddel, officially recognized as a whistleblower by the public authorities, even if this status could be called into question by the industrial tribunal. . He recounts how, astonished by these “suitcases full of tickets” who arrived mostly from African countries, in “scenes worthy of the best thrillers”he alerted management in 2017. In vain. After procrastinating, the brand (taken over by Fnac in 2016) ended up recognizing « des anomalies (…) immediately reported to the public prosecutor”. Then by filing a complaint, believing that they are victims of “a few dishonest employees in league with a few networks of external delinquents in a very limited number of stores”.

Consulting companies

After a detour through other cases of “serial fraudsters” − such as the founder of Geo France Finance, who, among other things, “forgot” to pay VAT… but not to buy a collection of Porsches and a yacht − , the documentary takes us to Andorra. Even if the Pyrenean principality is trying to get rid of its reputation as a tax haven – it obtained its exit from the OECD “grey” list in 2010 and renounced its banking secrecy in 2016 – it remains “the Eldorado of the French rich”. Witness these “tax optimization” and “asset management” consulting companies, which are well established there, and which we see here calmly explaining how to “relocate” your money without necessarily domiciling your business in Andorra − “butter and butter money, a very Franco-French obsession”smiles one of these advisors. Ghost companies, fictitious jobs, false invoices, anonymous money carriers… the whole range is deployed by these pharmacies.

“Forbidden Zone” wraps the subject behind the scenes of the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses, whose journalists were able to follow the “painful work to unmask the fraudsters”. For now, the cicadas continue to sing.