French justice is interested in Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). According to information from Monde, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) opened a preliminary investigation in March into his consulting activities carried out from Morocco.
The procedure, which was entrusted to the service of judicial investigations of finances (SEJF), the tax police of Bercy, relates to suspicions of “laundering of aggravated tax fraud”. The former Minister of the Economy was heard before the summer, in the context of police custody, so that he could explain the reality of his Moroccan tax resident status. The investigation was confirmed at Monde by the PNF, who declined to comment further.
The case finds its starting point in 2021 in the “Pandora Papers”, a collaborative investigation into tax havens published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Based on confidential financial documents, The world and his partners had revealed the details of an offshore arrangement set up by Dominique Strauss-Kahn to take advantage of various tax advantages, after his installation in Marrakech (central Morocco) in 2013 and his retraining in advising States and large private companies.
From Morocco to the Emirates
The socialist ex-managing director of the IMF had first created a Moroccan company, Parnasse International, in the financial free zone of Casablanca, a port city located in western Morocco, which allowed him to benefit from a tax exemption of five years. He had thus paid no tax on the 21 million euros in profits earned during this period.
Then in 2018, when this tax exemption ended, the former boss of the IMF had created in the United Arab Emirates a new offshore company completely exempt from taxes, Parnasse Global Limited, specializing in “advisory services in the Gulf region”. He had registered it in the smallest of the seven emirates, Ras Al-Khaïma, renowned for its particularly thick tax secrecy and its non-existent taxation, before closing it three years later, in April 2021.
Solicited by The worldDominique Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer, Jean Veil, ensures that his client’s tax situation is clear: “Documents were sent to the tax authorities, I am convinced that they were satisfied with them since nothing has happened since [l’audition de Dominique Strauss-Kahn] on a judicial level”. On the occasion of the investigation into the “Pandora Papers”, the entourage of Mr. Strauss-Kahn had also made it known that the choice of Ras Al-Khaïma did not respond to « motivations fiscales »but at the request of a major client in the region to domicile its contracts there.
French investigators are wondering, however, if the consulting services of the former IMF boss should not have been declared in France. They wonder about the reality of his Moroccan tax residence and, in particular, the location in the kingdom of the main office of his professional activities.
Income declared in Morocco
The data leak exploited by the ICIJ and The world had made it possible to lift part of the veil on the discreet and lucrative reconversion of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. In recent years, the former head of the IMF has provided advice to many African countries, including Togo, Faure Gnassingbé (president since 2005) and Congo-Brazzaville, Denis Sassou-Nguesso (president of the Republic of Congo since 1997) – two authoritarian regimes that called on the expertise of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, known as “DSK”, to overcome their financial difficulties and finance their development.
He also worked for the Russian oil giant Rosneft, headed by Igor Setchin, former vice-president of the government of the Russian Federation and close to President Vladimir Putin, under a contract invoiced for 1.75 million euros. in 2016-2017. The oil company Orion Oil, headed by the businessman Lucien Ebata, an intermediary close to the Sassou-Nguesso clan, also used Mr. Strauss-Kahn for consulting services billed 1.4 million euros, as did the Chinese conglomerate HNA (400,000 euros).
The “Pandora Papers” have not finished making people talk about them. Indeed, beyond Mr. Strauss-Kahn, the tax situation of around two hundred French people is currently being checked by the tax authorities. The names come from the public database put online by the ICIJ, which is regularly updated with the revelations of the consortium and its partners. At the beginning of the year, the PNF had also opened a preliminary investigation into the former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis for suspicion of laundering tax evasion, after the revelations of the “Pandora Papers” on his conditions of acquisition of villas on the Azure Coast.