The French tax authorities are currently verifying the tax domicile of Carlos Ghosn in the Netherlands and has seized some of his property as a precaution, AFP learned from a source close to the case, this Monday, December 14, confirming information from “Liberation”.
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Thus, the tax authorities are trying to determine whether the former head of the Renault-Nissan Alliance has artificially left France for the Netherlands, a movement of which the French authorities have been informed since 2012.
According to “Liberation”, the tax authorities would have seized the equivalent of 13 million euros of property in France, including an apartment in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.
The tax authorities in the know since 2012?
A few weeks after Carlos Ghosn’s departure from Renault in April 2019, a contradictory examination of his tax situation was launched, i.e. a meticulous tax audit that can last several months.
The former auto tycoon said in his book “The time of truth”, that the French tax authorities had been informed of his new domiciliation in 2012. A request for a tax ruling had remained unanswered, underlines the source close to the file.
Indeed, at the beginning of the 2000s, the umbrella structure of the Renault-Nissan Alliance (RBNV) had taken up residence under the mild Dutch tax regime, like many multinationals.
Carlos Ghosn, by Loïk Le Floch-Prigent: “When you are on the ground, everyone lets you go”
Carlos Ghosn would have transferred his residence there in 2012 “As a signal of neutrality”, to position yourself “First as head of the Alliance, before being that of Renault or Nissan”.
He also points out that he was domiciled and paid his taxes in Japan when he led Nissan, and in France since he took over as Renault.
“The populist machine for making fake news”
Faced with these revelations, Carlos Ghosn also denounces “The populist machine for making fake news” and the vote of the law Le Maire, named after the Minister of the Economy. The latter, adopted at the end of 2019, requires managers of French companies to be domiciled for tax purposes in France from 250 million euros in turnover.
Asked this Monday on France-Info, Bruno Le Maire did not wish to comment on the ongoing investigation.
Ghosn’s current lawyer received 900,400 euros from Renault-Nissan … without knowing why
Carlos Ghosn was arrested in November 2018 in Tokyo on suspicion of having failed to declare a large part of his income to the stock market authorities between 2010 and 2015. In March 2019, a Japanese judge accepted his release on bail, with a ban on leaving the Japan, but a few weeks later he was arrested again, accused of using $ 5 million for his personal benefit.
Carlos Ghosn, who denies these accusations, had fled Japan and arrived in Beirut on December 30, 2019 after an incredible escape.