Fourteen people were sentenced, Wednesday, April 20, for an assembly that allowed Wendel leaders to share 316 million euros in 2007 without paying taxes.
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The former leaders of the Wendel Investment Company, high-flying financial, should not expect to receive, from a magistrate, a magistrate on complex financial assemblies and their taxation. It is nevertheless at a lesson of almost two hours, Wednesday, April 20, the president of the 32 e Correctional Chamber of Paris. Bénédicte de Perthuis took the time to disassemble one of the hypertechnical arguments in which the very many lawyers of Ernest-Antoine Seillère, former President of the Medef, and thirteen other ex-leading executives of Wendel had sought to Walnut the Tribunal.
All came from Wednesday sentenced for participating in 2007 in a profit-sharing system having allowed them to be spread more than 316 million euros, without paying a tax pen. The most heavily sanctioned, at four years in prison, is Jean-Bernard Lafonta. The former President of the Executive Board is convicted of “tax fraud” – he was the first beneficiary with 116 million euros – and “complicity of tax evasion” – for being the main craftsman of this mechanism and having prompted the others to participate. He will also have to fulfill a fine of 37,500 euros, “derisory”, regretted the president. It was the maximum amount provided by the Penal Code at the time of the facts. The law has brought it since 500,000 euros.
The Tribunal did not follow the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office, which asked for the prison, three years more than two years suspended. M me of Perthuis, relentless to qualify the gravity of fraud, justified the absence of incarceration in particular by the seniority of the fifteen years.
m. Seillère is sentenced to three years imprisonment with reprieve and the same fine as all his former colleagues. He received 79 million euros thanks to this operation. The President of the Tribunal pointed out that the participation of the former boss of Wendel, today 84 years old, at this tax fraud, was “of particular gravity” in the light of the functions of President of the European Patronat. was at the time of the facts. It emphasizes the contradiction between the values that needed to be at the heart of its concerns and “devolution for its personal benefit of a tax mechanism created in 2000 to facilitate the restructuring of companies because of their interest in the economy”. It was a suspended suspension in the event of a transfer of securities.
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