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☆ Huawei’s offices in France raided by financial prosecutors
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-09 | by ( Chris Liakos | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

Paris/Hong Kong CNN —The French offices of Chinese tech giant Huawei were searched this week, the company confirmed Friday, saying it was fully cooperating with the authorities. The Shenzhen-based firm told CNN that the search had taken place Tuesday. While Huawei France does not wish to comment on an ongoing investigation, the company remains confident about its conclusions,” a spokesperson said. Speaking to French public radio in December, Minggang Zhang, deputy general manager of Huawei France, said the factory would begin operations by the end of 2025 in the Alsace region. “Every year, we invest some €80 million or more in research in France,” Zhang told radio network France Inter.

Persons: “, ”, Minggang Zhang, ” Zhang Organizations: Hong Kong CNN, Huawei, CNN, “ Huawei, Huawei France, France Inter, “ Locations: China, Paris, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, France, Huawei France, Alsace, “

☆ Russian Oligarch Kuzmichev Detained in France in Laundering, Sanctions Probe
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-31 | by ( Oct. | At A.M. | ) www.usnews.com time to read: 1 min

PARIS (Reuters) - Russian tycoon Alexey Kuzmichev is detained for questioning in France in connection with alleged tax evasion and money laundering and for violating international sanctions, the French Financial Prosecutors’ office said on Tuesday. Searches took place on Monday at Kuzmichev's Paris home and in the Mediterranean Var region as part of the investigation, the office said, confirming a report in French daily Le Monde. Kuzmichev was still being detailed on Tuesday but has not yet been charged in the case. French customs agents last year seized the oligarch's 27-metre yacht "La Petite Ourse", sparking a legal battle between authorities and Kuzmichev, one of the main shareholders of Russia's Alfa Bank. (Reporting by Dominique Vidalon, editing by Tassilo Hummel)

Persons: Alexey Kuzmichev, Kuzmichev, Dominique Vidalon, Tassilo Hummel Organizations: PARIS, Financial Prosecutors, Kuzmichev's Paris, Russia's Alfa Bank Locations: France, Le

☆ Russian oligarch Kuzmichev detained in France in laundering, sanctions probe
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-31 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

PARIS, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Russian tycoon Alexey Kuzmichev has been detained for questioning in France in connection with alleged tax evasion and money laundering and for violating international sanctions, the French Financial Prosecutors’ office said on Tuesday. Kuzmichev was still being detained on Tuesday but has not yet been charged in the case. Russia will be able to defend Kuzmichev's rights once Paris provides detailed information about his case, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. "As far as I understand, he is a citizen of the Russian Federation so we should receive information about the detention through our diplomatic mission," Peskov told reporters. "Once we receive the information, and if the detainee so wishes, we will of course assist in protecting his rights as a Russian citizen."

Persons: Alexey Kuzmichev, Kuzmichev, Philippe Blanchetier, Dmitry Peskov, Peskov, Vladimir Putin, Dominique Vidalon, Tassilo Hummel, Christina Fincher Organizations: Financial Prosecutors, Kuzmichev's Paris, Russian Federation, European Union, Russia's Alfa Bank, Thomson Locations: France, Le, Russia, Paris, Russian

He is charged with illegal campaign financing, embezzling, passive corruption and related counts. Investigators examined claims that Gadhafi’s government secretly gave Sarkozy 50 million euros for his winning 2007 campaign. The sum would be more than double the legal campaign funding limit at the time and would violate French rules against foreign campaign financing. After becoming president in 2007, Sarkozy welcomed Gadhafi to France with high honors later that year. In an unrelated case, Sarkozy was sentenced to a year of house arrest for illegal campaign financing of his unsuccessful 2012 reelection bid.

Persons: Nicolas Sarkozy, Sarkozy, ”, Moammar Gadhafi, Ziad Takieddine, Takieddine, Gadhafi, Gadhafi’s Organizations: PARIS, Sarkozy, NATO Locations: Libya, Lebanese, France

Sarkozy, 68, who served one term as French president from 2007 to 2012, has constantly denied any wrongdoing. In 2013, investigators looking into the Libyan connection decided to wire-tap two of Sarkozy's phone lines. As they did, they discovered a secret phone line used by the ex-president and his lawyer, ultimately leading to the corruption investigation. During the appeals trial, Sarkozy said "I'm here to defend my honour, which has been violated. The only other president during the course of France's 64-year-old Fifth Republic to be convicted by a court was Sarkozy's conservative predecessor, the late Jacques Chirac, who was found guilty of corruption in 2011.

The Lebanese bank did not respond to a message seeking comment. Bank statements seen by Reuters show how the Salameh accounts at AM Bank ballooned from $15 million in 1993 to more than $150 million by 2019. Lebanese prosecutors suspect the accounts, from which regular cash withdrawals were made, were used to conceal money laundering activity, a Lebanese judicial source said on Saturday. According to the lawyer, French prosecutors have summoned his client with a view of naming him a formal suspect. If French prosecutors suspected Salameh of wrongdoing, they could not hear him as a witness, Sur said.

☆ French financial prosecutors search bank offices over dividend stripping - spokesperson
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Close up of young woman inserting her bank card into automatic cash machine in the city. French authorities on Tuesday searched offices of several large banks, including Societe Generale, BNP Paribas and HSBC on the suspicion of money laundering and fiscal fraud, a spokesperson of the PNF financial prosecution office told Reuters. The other concerned banks could not immediately be reached for comment. The spokesperson confirmed earlier reports by paper Le Monde which said the probe was linked to dividend stripping and also hit Exane and Natixis. The PNF said that five investigations were ongoing linked to so-called "cum-cum" practices, through which wealthy clients sought to evade taxes on dividends through complex legal structures.

☆ Macron campaign accounts cleared by French audit body
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

PARIS, Jan 27 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron's 2022 election campaign finances, which came under scrutiny amid a wider controversy linked to U.S. consultancy McKinsey's ties to his government, were cleared by an audit commission, the body saidon Friday. The independent state body said it had received two tips about alleged irregularities in Macron's re-election campaign accounts which cited "irregular" assistance from unspecified consultancies, but said they appeared to be unfounded. Macron has said his campaign accounts had been flawless and that, as president, he does not directly deal with public tenders, adding: "The core of the investigation is not about me." With his campaign accounts now cleared and confirmation he did not break the legal ceiling applied to presidential election spending, Macron will get back about 10.4 million euros ($11.30 million) from the state towards his campaign spending. All the other contenders in the 2022 presidential election had their campaign accounts cleared by the state body.

☆ French prosecutors name Ukrainian suspect in Lebanese central bank probe
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-05 | by ( David Gauthier-Villars | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Dec 5 (Reuters) - French prosecutors said on Monday they have put a Ukrainian woman linked to the governor of Lebanon's central bank under formal investigation as part of a cross-border probe into alleged fraud to the detriment of the Lebanese state. A lawyer for Kosakova said he and his client would "react very soon" to the French prosecutors' decisions. Salameh, who has not been named as a suspect by French prosecutors but who had some of his real estate assets in France seized as part of the investigation, did not respond to a message seeking comment. A French lawyer for Salameh, Pierre-Olivier Sur, said the June decision on Kosakova "doesn't change anything". In the interview with Reuters, Riad Salameh has said he bought real estate assets with his own money, earned when he worked as an investment banker.

☆ France's Le Maire: We went too far in use of consulting firms
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-27 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

PARIS, Nov 27 (Reuters) - The French government made excessive use of consultancy firms in the past and is now striving to correct that, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Sunday. For years, this government and previous governments relied too much on consultancy firms. This was corrected by the Prime Minister's instruction that all ministries cut by 15% the use of consultancy firms," Le Maire told France 3 television. Between the first half of 2021 and the first half of 2022, the Finance Ministry had for instance managed to cut by 34% its use of consultancy firms, he added. A report by the French Senate in March 2022 had notably pointed out that the government was "dependent" on consulting firms such as McKinsey.

☆ French McKinsey Probe Widens to Include Campaign Financing
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-24 | by ( Noemie Bisserbe | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

President Emmanuel Macron’s government spent nearly 900 million euros last year on consultants, according to a French Senate report. PARIS—French prosecutors have opened probes into the role played by consulting firms in France’s 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, widening an existing investigation into consulting firm McKinsey & Co. Earlier this year, French financial prosecutors opened a tax-fraud and money-laundering investigation into McKinsey.

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