Former IMF Chief Strauss-Kahn Linked to Offshore Firms in "Pandora Papers" Leak

The Cash Investigation program aired an investigation into the activities and location of the company of the former socialist minister, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who has reinvented himself as a consultant to businesses and governments. He had created in September 2012 the Parnasse company based in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. The following year, he created the consulting firm Parnasse International in Morocco and set it up in Casablanca in the Casablanca Finance City (CFC) free zone. Like any French company based in this area, his company is exempt from income tax for five years.

Parnasse International makes millions of euros in profits: 7.8 million in 2014, 3.8 million in 2016 and more than 5 million euros the following year. From the sixth year, French companies must pay a tax of 8.75%, compared to 30% in the rest of Morocco and 33.13% in France at the same time. According to calculations by the tax specialist economist Ano Kuhanathan, "over five full fiscal years, we arrive at around 6.163 million euros in corporate tax that his company would have had to pay if it had been domiciled in France".

After the five-year tax exemption of the CFC, the former IMF Managing Director transfers his consulting firm to an even more opaque jurisdiction in the United Arab Emirates. According to confidential documents, he then creates Parnasse Global Limited in April 2018, seeking the expertise of the SFM company, one of the leaders in Dubai in the creation of offshore companies whose slogan is "simple, fast and efficient".