Tax evasion: the scenes of Google for investigation unveiled – The Express

A code name “Tulip operation,” a treaty folder “offline”, all to ensure “absolute confidentiality” Eliane Houlette, Head of Financial National parquet (PNF), detailed Sunday backstage tax fraud investigation against Google France.

On May 24, magistrates PNF assisted by officers of the Central Office of fight against corruption and financial and tax offenses (Oclciff) and computer experts have conducted raids on the headquarters Google France.

In all, nearly a hundred people, who were able to collect a “considerable” mass of computer data – “terabytes” said the national financial prosecutor when issuing the “Great Rendezvous” Europe 1 / I-Tele / Le Monde .

“Fight of David against Goliath”

Their exploitation will take “several months, I hope it will not be for several years,” added Eliane Houlette, regretting that investigators do not have the “extremely powerful software” that would allow them to go “much faster”.

The searches were conducted as part of a preliminary inquiry June 16, 2015 after a complaint from the tax authorities. “It was the biggest operation of PNF …” noted the prosecutor, Google is “still the largest company in terms of capitalization in the world.” “A little David against Goliath …” said she summarized.

A confidential operation

The complaint was “treated in complete confidentiality, given the activity of this company,” he told Eliane Houlette. “To ensure the complete confidentiality, we decided to give another name (in operation), ‘Tulipe’, never to utter the name Google,” she said.

In addition, with the tax authorities and investigators, “we worked out this folder only network offline (…) for almost a year, but only with a computer word processing “.

1.6 billion in back taxes

Would you like a trial? “Yes, of course … Once we commit investigations we hope that they come to an end and that people have a trial” to “make their case and we have ours,” a-t- she said.

“We respect French law and are cooperating fully with the authorities to answer their questions,” assured after recent searches a spokeswoman for Google France. The group is in the sights of Bercy for several years. A source close to the dossier had indicated in February that the tax authorities demanded 1.6 billion in back taxes to the US giant high-tech.