More than 220 million euros in corporate tax owed by Lactalis would have escaped the tax authorities between 2013 and 2018, estimates the investigative media Disclose on Friday, while the French dairy group refutes any tax evasion.
“
Lactalis does not evade tax.
It's a French company that pays its taxes in France,
”the group assured AFP.
Read also: Emmanuel Besnier, the most secret industrialist in France
The investigative website, which worked in a partnership with Mediapart, Brut, France Culture,
The Guardian
, Special Envoy (France 2) and the investigation site Le Poulpe, looked at the “
Complex financial engineering
” by Lactalis.
"
According to our estimates, the various tax evasion operations of Lactalis would have enabled the Besnier family to subtract no less than 220 million euros of corporate tax from the French tax authorities, between 2013 and 2018
", writes the media in line.
Disclose says it has analyzed 113 financial documents showing that Lactalis goes back the profits of its British and Spanish subsidiaries and its parent company BSA France to a
Luxembourg-based
"front
company
" called Nethuns, in the form of loan repayment.
According to documents from the Luxembourg commercial register, obtained by Disclose, the shareholders of Lactalis Emmanuel Besnier, his sister Marie Besnier and his brother Jean-Michel Besnier are all three beneficial owners of this shell company.
The fortune of Emmanuel Besnier, president of Lactalis, is estimated at 17.4 billion dollars (14.7 billion euros), and those of Marie Besnier and Jean-Michel Besnier at 6.1 billion dollars each (5 , 1 billion euros), according to Forbes magazine.
In 2018, the group had already denied “
alleged illegal tax practices
” after articles on the news sites Mediapart and Les Jours as well as in the weekly Ebdo.
At the beginning of 2019, the regional daily Ouest-France had also detailed the “
very complex fiscal piping
” of Lactalis on the basis of an expert report commissioned by the Confédération paysanne.
Read also: Pollution: Lactalis factories do not respect the environmental code, according to an investigation
The agricultural union had at the time submitted a "
report file
" to the national financial prosecutor's office on "
suspicions of tax evasion and fraud
".
The peasant confederation told AFP that it had no "
news
" of a possible opening of a judicial investigation.