Kiabi victim in July of “sophisticated large-scale financial fraud”

The French clothing brand Kiabi discovered in July that it had been the victim of a “sophisticated large-scale financial fraud”management indicated to Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Friday September 27, confirming information from franceinfo which estimates this embezzlement at 100 million euros. “This fraud in no way calls into question the financial solidity of Kiabi”» added the management, which neither confirmed nor denied the amount of the embezzlement. In 2023, Kiabi achieved a turnover of 2.2 billion euros.

According to franceinfo, a former treasurer of the brand was arrested in August by the judicial police as she got off a private jet on the runway at Figari airport, in Corsica. This 39-year-old woman, based in Florida and working in the luxury sector, was then taken into police custody, the media further specifies.

Still according to Franceinfo, Kiabi was seeking to recover an investment made a year earlier in mid-July. “But when Kiabi contacted the bank this summer to recover the investment, the money disappeared, thanks to the bounce account technique”which consists of passing a sum through several accounts in order to prevent the traceability of funds, specifies the information site, which then specifies: “Upon discovery, Kiabi filed a complaint and the Paris prosecutor opened an investigation. »

At the end of her police custody, Kiabi’s ex-treasurer was brought back to Paris, where an investigating judge indicted her for fraud and money laundering in an organized gang, the investigators not imagining that “she could have acted alone, specifies franceinfo. On Friday, the prosecution confirmed its indictment dated August 18, without corroborating the amount of damage.

“We immediately launched all necessary actions, including legal ones, in order to obtain recovery of the amount of the fraud. We have every confidence in the results of the actions carried out by the judicial and police authorities involved”» Kiabi management told AFP on Friday.

Created in 1978 in the north of France, Kiabi relies on a network of more than six hundred points of sale in twenty-eight countries. Kiabi is part of the Mulliez family galaxy which brings together nearly fifty brands through various participations (Auchan, Decathlon, Saint-Maclou, Jules, Pizza Paï, Electro Depot, etc.).