The first prosecution resulting from the HSBC Suisse document leaks took place on Monday, when the French courts found Arlette Ricci, inheritor of the fortune from the Nina Ricci perfumes and fashion business, guilty of tax evasion. A court in Paris ordered Arlette Ricci to pay €1m in fines and serve three years in jail, two of them suspended, after finding that the 73-year-old hid $22m from the French tax authorities using accounts and offshore entities based for the most part in Panama.
Tessa Lorimer, special counsel at law firm Withers, commented: ‘This high profile conviction demonstrates that despite the HSBC data leak disappearing from the news agenda for a while, European tax authorities have been busily working on the data, and there is still strong political will to pursue HSBC's Swiss accountholders. The long-reaching ramifications of the HSBC disclosure will continue to be felt for some time to come, and this certainly won't be the only prosecution.’
The first prosecution resulting from the HSBC Suisse document leaks took place on Monday, when the French courts found Arlette Ricci, inheritor of the fortune from the Nina Ricci perfumes and fashion business, guilty of tax evasion. A court in Paris ordered Arlette Ricci to pay €1m in fines and serve three years in jail, two of them suspended, after finding that the 73-year-old hid $22m from the French tax authorities using accounts and offshore entities based for the most part in Panama.
Tessa Lorimer, special counsel at law firm Withers, commented: ‘This high profile conviction demonstrates that despite the HSBC data leak disappearing from the news agenda for a while, European tax authorities have been busily working on the data, and there is still strong political will to pursue HSBC's Swiss accountholders. The long-reaching ramifications of the HSBC disclosure will continue to be felt for some time to come, and this certainly won't be the only prosecution.’
