HSBC and Societe Generale offices raided in Paris

The Paris branches of banks Societe Generale, BNP Paribas and its subsidiaries Exane, HSBC and BPCE were raided as part of a French-German investigation into tax evasion, writes Reuters.

Societe Generale confirmed the searches but did not provide further comment. According to the French Le Monde, the searches started in the morning and continued until noon. More than 200 law enforcement officers took part in them, clarifies German Handelsblatt.

France’s National Financial Attorney’s Office (PNF) said the investigation was related to the so-called “cum-ex” scheme, in which banks and shareholders transferred their shares to foreign investors on the dividend day, which made it possible to obtain tax breaks on income from valuable papers. After the payment of dividends, the shares were returned to the former owners, and the dividends were divided in half between the shareholder and the foreign investor, writes Reuters.

By information Bloomberg, banks face a collective fine of over 1 billion euros in a tax fraud case.

It is clarified that these searches are part of an investigation that was launched by the PNF at the end of 2021, writes Le Monde. According to the publication, the litigation was caused by a financial scandal that was uncovered by Le Monde in 2018. It was then revealed that as a result of the use of the cum-ex trading scheme, France is losing several billion euros annually.