Cracks in the Mulliez empire? The group that owns Auchan, Leroy Merlin and Décathlon is at the heart of an investigation carried out in Paris into suspicions of tax fraud, in which several heirs of the family have been indicted. A sort of shareholders’ pact governs the Mulliez “galaxy” of companies with a complex and opaque structure: it mixes civil companies owned by the family and holding companies managing the brands.
Only descendants of the original Mulliez couple, Louis and Marguerite, as well as their spouses, commonly known as “added values”, are authorized to own stakes. All joined – after a three-day seminar – the Mulliez Family Association (AFM), an economic interest group today with several hundred members based in Roubaix and created in 1955.
Suspicions of very high and interest-free loans
In 2012, according to a judicial source confirming Releasea former member of the family, Hervé Dubly, denounces in a first complaint in Lille “very high loans without writing and without interest granted” by structures of the group “to foreign companies [plusieurs centaines de millions] and to individuals via personal or family civil companies [plusieurs millions] “. The complainant sees these as opaque loans with no apparent justification constituting a breach of trust, particularly in that they do not respect equality between the partners.
The investigation, entrusted for many years to Parisian financial judges, is looking into this arrangement which “could also allow a reduction in tax in France [permettant par exemple de bénéficier de dividendes à l’étranger] and would therefore be likely to receive the qualification of aggravated tax fraud or laundering of aggravated tax fraud,” specifies the judicial source.
Several indictments
The investigation gave rise to searches which the press had already reported in 2016 in France, Belgium and Luxembourg, but also to others in the Netherlands in 2019. To date, several indictments have been pronounced: Jérôme and Thierry Mulliez in 2019, as well as a manager of a Dutch company linked to the group in 2020, for breach of trust and laundering of tax fraud, and three financial structures, in January 2023, for aggravated laundering of tax fraud aggravated. A member of the Mulliez family was placed under the intermediate status of assisted witness in 2019.
The judicial source noted that it was the classification of money laundering which was retained by the courts. In 2023, the investigating judges closed their investigations for the first time. But since then, the Directorate of National and International Audits (DVNI), the tax sleuths, have transmitted to the investigating magistrate the documents from the tax audit still in progress, according to the judicial source. The provision of these documents in the procedure could postpone the outcome of the procedure and modify the conclusions.
“Financial flows are transparent”
When contacted, several defense lawyers did not wish to speak or did not respond to requests from AFP. One of them, however, assured that all those involved were “perfectly calm” and had filed observations for the purposes of dismissing the case. According to the judicial source, the decision to prosecute “will depend largely on the analysis of the DVNI”.
While according to a source close to the matter, the investigation concerns “the organization of Mulliez companies and holdings” in general “rather than individual abuses”, the AFM said it was “totally calm”. “Financial flows are completely transparent and are part of a logic of economic development. No tax benefit was sought, no tax benefit was realized. None,” insisted the AFM.