Standing accused of running a turnkey tax evasion service for Europe's wealthy, Belgian prince Henri de Croÿ was among the first defendants to appear on Monday as the "Dubai Papers" trial opened at the Paris Criminal Court.
The 68-year-old, known as "A3" in internal messages, is accused of heading an organisation that offered wealthy clients a turnkey service: hiding their money from the taxman and helping getting them back again. He stands trial among 13 individuals and three companies until 3 December.
Henri de Croÿ is entitled to use the title ‘prince’ because he belongs to the noble de Croÿ family. It is a hereditary title of nobility, and there is no connection with the Belgian royal family.
What are the Dubai papers?
In 2019, De Tijd revealed how members of the Belgian nobility, business leaders and other wealthy Belgians allegedly used the network to hide illicit funds between 2002 and the end of 2018.
The French case concerns more than a hundred wealthy French taxpayers who allegedly evaded at least €54 million in taxes between 2007 and 2018. According to prosecutors, the network managed more than €200 million in assets for 322 French taxpayers, using 658 offshore companies.
The defendants face charges of complicity in tax fraud and money laundering as part of an organised gang, and criminal conspiracy.
As its heart of the scheme was the Swiss firm Jawer. In 2007, to get around the lifting of Swiss banking secrecy, it moved to the United Arab Emirates, operating as Helin, from the free zone Ras al-Khaimah, north of Dubai.
In January 2019, someone anonymously handed French prosecutors a USB stick containing thousands of internal documents. These documents revealed encrypted chats with clients, aliases, and cash delivered in suitcases or on prepaid cards, in a world where business practices sometimes overlapped with those of organised crime.
According to prosecutors, de Croÿ's tax expertise, his connections among Europe's aristocracy and his knowledge of the justice system, gained from earlier legal troubles in Belgium, largely explain why the fraud grew so larges and lasted so long.
His lawyer, Antoine Vey, told L'echo that the prince did not contest the allegations, but that the court must separate what he knew from what he did not.
Also in the dock are his brother and business partner, Emmanuel de Croÿ, and British philanthropist Géraldine Whittaker, whose charitable trusts were allegedly used to hide some clients' money.
Proceedings are also ongoing in Belgium and Switzerland.
