The Ministry of Economy and Finance was raided on Monday as part of an investigation into suspicions of tax favors granted by Gérald Darmanin during the transfer of Neymar.
Police officers from the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Tax Fraud carried out searches in Bercy on Monday January 15, according to information from Médiapart confirmed by AFP. These searches were part of an investigation opened into suspicions of tax favors granted by Gérald Darmanin to Paris-Saint-Germain, during the transfer of Brazilian footballer Neymar in 2017. The current Minister of the Interior, who was then Minister of Action and Public Accounts, was accused by Médiapart of having “helped PSG not to pay tens of millions of euros in transfer taxes”.
In the summer of 2017, the colossal cost of Neymar’s transfer from FC Barcelona to PSG was on everyone’s lips: the Brazilian star’s contract with his former club included a release clause of no less than 222 million euros. Clause that it was up to the player’s new club, PSG, to reimburse. PSG management was then concerned that this reimbursement was considered by the French tax authorities as an advance on salary, subject to income tax and social security contributions.
It was then that the club’s communications director, Jean-Martial Ribes, contacted LREM MP Hugues Renson, according to Médiapart, to convince him to interact in his favor with Gérald Darmanin, Minister of Action and Public accounts. Text messages between Jean-Martial Ribes and Hugues Renson indicate that the minister would have agreed to look into the issue. The general director of PSG would have spoken with the director of Darmanin’s office on July 24, 2017, who would have given him a note entitled “player transfer” including “ways to avoid social security contributions”, claims Médiapart.
A few days before the officialization of Neymar’s transfer, PSG received “two tax rulings sent by the tax authorities and Urssaf of Ile-de-France, which announce to the club that there will be neither tax nor social contributions to pay regarding Neymar’s release clause”, indicates the media.
Gérard Darmanin has always denied any “tax favor”: “Everything was done within the framework of the tax laws of the Republic”, he assured in 2018, after the first revelations from Médiapart.