Offshore insurance for Bernard Arnault

The Paris prosecutor’s office began to investigate “suspicious” real estate transactions in the elite ski resort of Courchevel, in which the head of the LVMH holding may have participated Bernard Arnault (second in Forbes list with a fortune of $187.2 billion) and co-owner of the RESO group Nikolay Sarkisov (status according to according to Forbes — $850 million), Le Monde reports with reference to sources.

Bernard Arnault

Nikolay Sarkisov

As the publication notes, the financial intelligence unit Tracfin suspects businessmen of money laundering. According to the department, in 2018, companies created in France, Luxembourg and Cyprus, within a few weeks, acquired 14 real estate properties in the prestigious area of the Jardin-Alpin resort for a total amount of €16 million. The final purchaser of the property was the Cypriot company La Fleche, which financial intelligence suspects of connections with Sarkisov.

In the same month, La Fleche bought three more properties for €2.2 million from SNC Croix Realty, which is also suspected of being connected to Sarkisov. The prosecutor’s office suspects that the Russian sold the property to himself and was thus able to launder about €1.2 million.

At the same time, Arnault, as Le Monde writes, gave Sarkisov the €18.3 million needed to purchase real estate through his company SNC Metropole, which belongs to the holding company of the French businessman. After the transactions allegedly carried out by Sarkisov, Arnault bought all the shares of La Fleche, becoming its main beneficiary. “The straw buyer sought to conceal the true end buyer,” Tracfin concluded.

According to Le Monde, in 2018, Mr. Sarkisov acquired more than a dozen properties in Courchevel through intermediary companies. However, the final buyer of these assets turned out to be Bernard Arnault. At the same time, he allegedly paid Nikolai Sarkisov about €20 million for nominal ownership of the assets, and he earned about €2 million in profit from this deal. […] LVMH is the largest company in Europe by market capitalization, which approaches €360 billion. Bernard Arnault, whose family controls LVMH, is the second richest person in the world after Elon Musk. His fortune is estimated at $212 billion.

As Le Monde notes, a year after the suspicious actions, all of the company’s real estate was transferred to the management of the Metropole 1850 hotel holding, owned by Arnault.

A newspaper source close to the Russian businessman confirmed the reality of these transactions. At the same time, according to him, the purpose of all these purchases was to “accumulate” all the plots in the hands of one owner.

“Once that was done, the value of the building increased and it could be resold to buyers who didn’t want to take on all that risk.”explained the interlocutor of Le Monde.

What is the reason for such close attention to the figure of Arno? An expert in the field of international and American law, Alexander Treshchev, comments: “The strangeness of this deal is not that he received a loan from one of Arnault’s companies, but that the money was received from Luxembourg and Cyprus. There are offshore companies there. All European financial intelligence agencies, as soon as they see that some money has arrived, look at these transactions through a magnifying glass, since, as a rule, this is associated with money laundering. A very delicate investigation is being conducted taking into account Arnault’s personality, but the very fact of communicating and lending money to Russian businessmen casts a shadow on this man and does not make an exception for him on the part of the French Themis.” […]
According to family lore, Arno has a special connection with Courchevel. It was there that he learned to ski as a child and now owns a mansion and the luxurious Cheval Blanc Hotel. This is the abode of a billionaire, where the price of a hotel night can reach several tens of thousands of euros per night. And it is one of the leading assets in Arnault’s real estate portfolio. […] The investigation has been ongoing since December 2022. Information about Arnault’s participation in the deal has appeared in the media more than once. At the end of September – for a relatively long time – again. […] The French financial intelligence service Tracfin did not establish that a crime had been committed. Experts say it is unlikely that a criminal case will be filed. This is more like another scandal that shows the whole world that dealing with Russian business is now risky.

Deputy General Director for Marketing, Advertising and PR of the RESO-Garantia company Igor Ivanov, responding to a request from RBC, called the investigation an empty “attack” of a French journalist. He emphasized that we are talking about the purchase of about a dozen apartments in an old building in Courchevel with the aim of turning the building after renovation (or reconstruction) into a hotel. He called the transaction ordinary, emphasizing that all its stages were carried out in strict accordance with the requirements of French legislation and under the control of French notaries, “that is, transparently and understandably.”

“Upon completion of the transaction, the French companies participating in it, which represented the interests of the Russian investor, paid all taxes required in France. Thus, we are talking about an absolutely empty “attack” by a not very competent French journalist who decided to distinguish himself in a new “witch hunt”said Ivanov.

According to him, Russian investors in the current political context harbor hidden threats and dirty secrets. “And the final thing: all this has nothing to do with RESO-Garantiya and other companies of the RESO group,” concluded the company representative.

The lawyer for LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault said the accusations that the billionaire was involved in money laundering were unfounded. About this with reference to the statement of Jacqueline Laffont writes Bloomberg. Ms Laffont said the allegations were “as absurd as they were unfounded” and the operation to expand the Cheval Blanc hotel in Courchevel, which is believed to be at the heart of them, “was carried out in accordance with the law and with the support of consultants”.
“Who can seriously imagine that Mr. Bernard Arnault, who over the last forty years has built a leading French and European company, would launder money for the sake of hotel expansion? I don’t think anyone can miss the insanity of these accusations,” said the billionaire’s lawyer. […]
Nikolay Sarkisov in 2021 was included in ranking of the 200 richest businessmen in Russia, compiled by Russian Forbes. Then he served as deputy general director of RESO-Garantia, his fortune was estimated at $850 million. Forbes estimated the wealth of his older brother Sergei Sarkisov, co-owner of RESO-Garantia, at the same amount. Information about the management bodies and shareholders of RESO-Garantia at present not published based on the decision of the Board of Directors of the Bank of Russia dated December 2022.

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