It is an invitation in the form of an ultimatum. In a statement released on Wednesday 18 January, the National Finance Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) is asking French customers of the Helin International group, a pharmacy accused of organizing tax evasion for hundreds of European customers, to “get closer to the Public Prosecutor’s Office as soon as possible”.
Revealed in 2018 by the weekly The Obs, the “Dubai Papers” unearthed a tax evasion scandal, based on thousands of internal documents of the company Helin International FZE, based in Ras Al-Khaïma, in the heart of the United Arab Emirates. The data allows the link to be made between the identity of the clients, the name of their offshore companies registered in tax havens and associated bank account details. Agreements hidden from the tax authorities of the countries of residence thanks to a system of nominees.
As the press revealed this tax evasion scheme, “the PNF was the recipient, through anonymous transmissions, of two IT supports” of the same data, specifies the Finance Prosecutor, who on 5 September 2019 opened an investigation for aggravated money laundering of tax evasion. The figure was analyzed in collaboration with the Directorate General of Public Finance which filed forty-two complaints against tax evasion tax payers.
Fake invoices
The investigations were entrusted to the Financial Judicial Investigation Service of Bercy and the Central Office for the fight against corruption and financial and tax crimes of the judicial police.
To date, the investigators have carried out seventy-two searches and fifty hearings and police detention. Among the scammers, some have inherited, after the death of their parents, bank accounts hidden abroad but have chosen to remain clandestine. Other clients are entrepreneurs who have set up, with the complicity of the Helin group, a system of false invoices to pierce the cash flow of their companies and then recover the stolen sums from an offshore bank account. The money was eventually delivered to customers in France by Helin International group “distributors” in the form of envelopes of pre-loaded anonymous cash or bank cards.
Four customers of the Helin Group have already been sentenced to suspended prison sentences and several million euros in fines after reporting to the authorities and admitting the facts of money laundering tax fraud. They have also regularized their situation with the tax authorities. “Other proceedings are nearing conclusion and in the coming months they will also give rise to criminal proceedings”specifies the PNF.
The invitation to customers Helin a “approach” of the Public Prosecutor’s Office aims precisely to accelerate this process. This “Last Chance Call”, according to a legal source, is a voluntary choice of communication that should allow magistrates, policemen and public officials to save time and resources in the search for the hundreds of identified French customers of the Helin group. In return, the latter are offered the possibility of legal treatment which will take into account their approach to the complaint and their level of cooperation. They have until April 30, 2023 to make themselves known. In reverse, “failure to manifest itself within this period will be taken into account in the context of the treatment”concludes the statement.
A file titled “Disappear”
This approach recalls, on another scale, the Corrective Statement Processing Service, opened from 2013 to 2017 by the Directorate General of Public Finance following the Cahuzac affair. This “tax recovery cell,” which allowed evaders to disclose their situation and escape prosecution, cleared more than 50,000 tax evaders’ files in four and a half years.
The judicial investigation into the “Dubai Papers” is unprecedented in the quantity and accuracy of the information held by the PNF and the tax administration. The hundreds of thousands of internal documents provide unprecedented insight into the workings of the Helin Group. The tables allow you to accurately trace the life of offshore companies, their creation and the details of their activities. Other files trace financial flows from bank accounts to remittances to customers in France. All of this data was compiled into a file entitled “Disappear”, which was eventually used for press disclosures.
Beyond the situation of the clients, justice also has precise elements on the role of the “business introducers”, those lawyers, accountants or notaries who have knowingly offered their clients the services of the Helin group in exchange for a commission on the sums processed. Also targeted are the organizers of the scam who may be concerned about justice. Franco-Belgian banker Henri de Croÿ, suspected of having headed the Helin group, moved to Colombia in August 2021, according to reports LobSt.