This Wednesday, March 8, investigators from the National Tax Crime Prevention Brigade (BNRDF) arrested Adrien Labi, a businessman suspected of being behind fraudulent financial arrangements to buy and resell real estate. A colossal amount of 461 million euros was seized.
This is a crucial step in a legal procedure initiated several years ago and which resulted in the seizure of an extraordinary amount. The police officers of the National Brigade for the Repression of Tax Crime (BNRDF) of the central direction of the judicial police and the judicial tax officers of Bercy, in the footsteps of Adrien Labi since 2015, arrived this week on a decisive phase, with his arrest this Wednesday, March 8, and the seizure, the same day, of 461 million euros.
Adrien Labi was indicted for aggravated tax evasion and laundering of aggravated tax evasion, and placed under judicial control with the obligation to pay a deposit of 30 million euros.
Specialist in the purchase and resale of real estate with substantial capital gains, this man born in the 1950s, is suspected of having evaded the tax authorities on the sums recovered during the transactions.
THE EQUIVALENT OF more than half of the sums seized by the police last year
461 million euros, an “outstanding” sum, underlines the divisional commissioner Guillaume Hézard, head of the OCLCIFF (Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses), who recalls that this amount “is equivalent to more half of what all the police and gendarmerie services seized last year”.
“Our Office seized 55 million euros in 2022, the previous year 17 million and 166 million euros in 2020. The system that this man is suspected of having put in place was not the most elaborate but it played on the differences between tax treaties of different states and on an effect, it must be said, of nerve in its financial arrangements. Investigations are continuing to determine possible complicity.
For the facts with which he is charged, the businessman risks up to ten years in prison and double payment of the proceeds of the sums defrauded and half of the sums laundered.
