The feeling of accomplishment, Boris G. goes on vacation. Its algorithm spotted a possible VAT fraud involving two Falcon 7X private jets, for which the importer allegedly failed to pay several million euros when they were delivered to French territory. This is excellent news for his employer, French customs, who bet on artificial intelligence to target import fraud, setting up, a few months earlier, a “risk analysis and targeting service (SARC). Its mission: to cross databases to detect, using sophisticated algorithms, statistical anomalies leading to possible irregularities.
One surprising detail, however, in the signature of the email that Boris G. sent on July 27, 2017, to share his results: this artificial intelligence specialist, who works on ultra-sensitive data covered by tax secrecy, is not not a customs official, but a private Capgemini consultant.
Despite the risks, the SARC indeed outsourced part of its automatic fraud detection project to the French IT consulting giant, in 2017 and 2018. According to the elements collected by The worldthe project consisted of setting up a “data sink” bringing together several files from customs and the tax administration, on which the private consultants could then connect to carry out their analyses. On this computer server were data on all goods crossing French borders, including sensitive goods such as war material. But also very precise information on the control operations carried out by customs.
“Sovereign prerogatives of the State”
Could some of this data have been extracted from the customs servers by unscrupulous Capgemini consultants? A document suggests in any case that no safeguards were planned, since a consultant was able to make a copy on her computer of part of the Banaco file, which contains information as precise as the name of the company. checked by customs and the result of the check. However, the order for declaring this file is clear: it should only be accessible to customs officers.
The world also learned that the director of the SARC, Perry Menz, had informed several Capgemini consultants that the importer of the Falcon 7X jets identified by their algorithm was already in the sights of the National Directorate of Intelligence and Customs Investigations (DNRED). Ultra-confidential information, since the company concerned, Dassault Aviation, was not aware at the time itself. This imprudence is all the more surprising since Dassault Aviation was also at the time a customer of Sogeti, a subsidiary of Capgemini.
You have 48.67% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.