French Prosecutors Open Money Laundering Probe into Ex-IMF Chief Strauss-Kahn

The French justice system is interested in Dominique Strauss-Kahn again. The National Financial Prosecutor’s Office announced the opening of an investigation for aggravated money laundering following the revelations of the "Pandora Papers", which targets the consulting activities carried out by the former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn from Morocco, reports Le Monde. According to a judicial source, the Judicial Financial Investigation Service (SEJF) in charge of this investigation has heard Dominique Strauss-Kahn under custody at the end of the summer.

The Cash Investigation program had broadcast an investigation in October 2021 on the activities and location of the company of the former socialist minister, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who has reinvented himself as a consultant to companies and governments. He created the Parnasse company in September 2012 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. After the five years of tax exemption from the CFC, the former IMF managing director transfers his consulting business to an even more opaque jurisdiction in the United Arab Emirates. According to confidential documents, he then creates Parnasse Global Limited in April 2018 in the United Arab Emirates, a country where there is no public company register. DSK’s company therefore pays no tax.

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"The tax authorities requested an appointment with my client and nothing has happened since," said Jean Veil, the former Economy Minister’s lawyer. And he added: "I deduce that the administration was convinced that he was indeed a Moroccan tax resident. For me, it was a closed file. When he comes to Paris, it’s less than six months, he has no children in Paris, his work is not in France, I don’t see the elements that would justify the fact that his taxation would be faulty."