NGO Transparency France files a complaint in case of assets of Russian oligarchs in France

The anti-corruption organization filed a complaint against X in the national financial prosecution for “money laundering, non-adjustment of resources, concealment and complicity of these three offenses”. It aims at the conditions in which heritage on the French Riviera, the Basque Coast, ski resorts have been made up … and wants to tackle a system.

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Three months after the start of the war in Ukraine, the French branch of the NGO Anticorruption Transparency International decides to seize justice, on the question of real estate acquired in France by the Russian oligarchs close to the Kremlin.

A complaint against X was filed by Transparency France, Friday, May 20, at the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), for acts of “money laundering, non-justification of resources, concealment and complicity of these three offenses”, according to the information obtained by Le Monde. It aims at the conditions in which certain oligarchs and relatives of the Vladimir Putin regime were a major real estate heritage, between 2003 and 2018, on the Côte d’Azur, the Basque Coast, the west of Paris and in Defs Alps.

The complaint is filed against X, because it intends to tackle a system and its implications in France. The file made up of the NGO is nevertheless supported. It contains names of billionaires, businessmen and senior officials, who have luxury villas and apartments in France forfura with a value estimated at “several tens of millions of euros”, and whose origin of Fund is suspicious, explains the NGO in the world. “Our idea is that justice can invest in a broad way on the basis of the elements we bring, argues the president of Transparency France, Patrick Lefas. French justice is competent because these goods are located on French territory And that a potential laundering offense would have been carried out in France. We hope to refer an investigating judge who will go up the silver track. “

For the NGO, it is, in fact, to approach the subject of Russian assets from the angle of poorly acquired goods, to the way in which has been dealt with and explored, in recent years, the question of Heritage accumulated in France by senior African leaders, funded by funds from the diversion of public money or corruption. One of the Creeds of Transparency is that “France should no longer be a reception land for dirty money”.

a legal breach

If the NGO refuses, at this stage, to quote the names of the personalities targeted in its complaint, it is, she underlines, so as not to endanger its teams based in Russia and Ukraine. The owners of the goods are often hidden behind ecrans in tax and judicial havens. The recent opening, in several European countries, of public registers containing the identity of the real owners of companies, added to press surveys and certain already open legal proceedings, made it possible, according to the NGO, to dismantle ” Property channels “and bring together” a beam of indices on the illicit origin of their resources “. Among the people targeted, are not surprised, of the oligarchs placed under international sanctions of the European Union and the United States, and some of which have already been frozen by the French public authorities.

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/Media reports.