Paris court
sentences Arlette Ricci to three years in jail, two of them suspended, for
‘particularly determined willingness for over 20 years’ to hide money
The Guardian, Kim Willsher in Paris, 13 April 2015
 |
| Arlette Ricci is the first of around 50 wealthy French nationals being pursued in the courts for allegedly placing money in Switzerland to avoid taxes. Photograph: Loic Venance/AFP/Getty Images |
The heir to
the Nina Ricci perfume dynasty has been sentenced to three years in prison, two
of them suspended, after being convicted on Monday of hiding money from the French taxman with the help of HSBC.
A Paris
court also fined Arlette Ricci €1m (£722,000) after declaring she had shown a
“particularly determined willingness for more than 20 years” to hide money left
to her by her father in Swiss bank accounts.
“The
seriousness of the facts are an exceptional threat to public order and the
republican pact,” read the judgment, seen as an important precedent for as many
as 50 other cases of alleged tax fraud involving HSBC in France.
Judges also
ordered the seizure of a house in Paris and a property in Corsica with a total
estimated value of €4m, that it said had been transferred to family trusts in
an alleged attempt by Ricci to “organise her own insolvability” and escape
financial penalties.
Ricci, 74,
is the first of around 50 wealthy French nationals being pursued in the courts
for allegedly placing money in Switzerland to avoid taxes.
During the
high-profile trial, she was accused of hiding €18m from the French taxman. She
had fiercely denied the accusations, insisting the measures taken to optimise
her tax bill were legal.
The
judgment comes just five days after HSBC Holdings was officially mis en examen,
the French equivalent of being charged, for complicity in hiding fiscal fraud
and illegal selling via its Swiss arm between 2006 and 2007. The bank was
ordered to pay a €1bn surety. The Geneva-based branch of the bank is accused of
having hidden around €5bn for nearly 9,000 wealthy French customers.
Ricci’s tax
adviser Henri-Nicolas Fleurance was given a one-year suspended prison sentence
and a €10,000 fine for attempting to organise her insolvency, and Ricci’s
daughter an eight-month suspended sentence for fiscal fraud.
The
heiress’s lawyers said they would consider the judgment before deciding whether
to appeal.
The Swiss
branch of HSBC, Britain’s biggest bank, was officially put under investigation
last November on allegations that it helped rich clients conceal money in offshore accounts.
Ricci’s
name was among around 3,000 suspected tax fraudsters holding non-declared bank
accounts in Switzerland. The names featured in bank files passed to the French
authorities in 2008 by HSBC employee Hervé Falciani.
Most of the
cases were settled, but Ricci’s was among 50 that were handed over to the
courts. She was arrested in 2011 after police turned up at her apartment on
Paris’s chic Boulevard Saint-Germain in a dawn raid.
Ricci was
held in custody for 48 hours before being put under investigation. Her lawyers
had attempted to have the case thrown out, arguing that the Falciani documents
were stolen and should not be admitted as evidence.
As well as
French investigations, the Swiss branch of HSBC is facing charges of fraud and
money laundering in Belgium after the Brussels authorities claimed it had
“knowingly eased and promoted fiscal fraud by making offshore companies
available to certain privileged clients”.
Nina Ricci,
whose real name was Maria Adélaïde Nielli, was an Italian-born clothes designer
who settled in France aged 12 in 1895. She died in 1970. Her son Robert,
Arlette Ricci’s father, developed the company’s perfume sideline and raised the
firm’s international profile. Arlette Ricci inherited his fortune on his
death in 1988.
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