The scandal of "Dubai Securities" stains the reputation of the first Swiss bank on the Internet
The Swiss prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into “money laundering” involving Swissquote Bank, which is suspected of harboring part of the tax money smuggled by Helen Group based on the Dubai Securities scandal, a magazine reported on Tuesday.
Helen, the vast network suspected of widespread tax evasion and money laundering, is being cracked down after its existence was revealed by Novell Observer a year ago.
According to the magazine and information from the newspaper La Tribune de Genève, the Swiss Attorney General’s Office has requested a freeze on all accounts of Helen’s open clients at Swissquote Bank, “the new generation”, the country’s first online bank, which seeks to be clean and free of old practices, and may exceed the amounts That has been frozen sixty million euros.
When the first articles on Dubai Securities appeared in September 2018, Swissquote wondered whether many of Helen’s clients would be hosted by a strange account of Blue Ocean International in Puerto Rico, which was set up in June 2016. By Frenchman Gilles R, while the founder of the Helen Group was Belgian prince Henri de Crowe looking for a way to escape the end of bank secrecy.
Because of the difficulty of diving into 200,000 tax laundering files, Swissquote said it was not clear to him. Between December 2016 and March 2017, Helen transferred 73 accounts to Blue Ocean International, which offers a range of financial services. However, he is not entitled to receive deposits, and as a result, had to deposit the funds of the 73 accounts of Helen into one account in Swiscott.
After an internal audit that lasted several months, according to the magazine, Swissquote ended up exposing Blue Ocean International on suspicion of tax evasion.
A financial monster Two months ago, Gill R swore as a witness to Swiss prosecutor Carolyn Babel Cassot that Blue Ocean International cut bridges with the Helen Group when the Dubai Securities scandal broke out, but admitted that in February 2019 he again opened an account for a key Helen customer.
Was it to evade future judicial investigations? Whether or not the Helen Group is paralyzed today because of the backlog of issues, its 200 clients can no longer access their accounts.
Although about 20 Helen agents – including the majority of the French – have chosen to settle their status with tax authorities and file complaints in different jurisdictions in France, Switzerland, and the UAE, the money remains uncollectible, the magazine says.
A Swiss lawyer representing a French who put two million euros in Helen said “Helen officials had created a” financial beast “, where all the money was mixed.
“There is a double risk for our customers. Some people owe as much as 20 million euros to French tax authorities, and they will need to recover the money in Helen to pay,” said Chloe Belloy, who represents many Frenchmen. Have disappeared or been frozen by justice in structures created by Helen without the consent and knowledge of the clients. "
A state issue in Belgium Other complaints have recently been filed with the Abu Dhabi Commercial Court through Al Shamsi & Co. to recover money from a local financial institution, Adab Security, and “customers have been able to obtain bank secrecy to check their accounts,” says a source close to the file.
In Belgium, Dubai Securities has become a state issue due to the disclosure of the activities of the Belgian prince Henry de Crow, nicknamed the “Black Prince” in his country of origin, because he has long been associated with one of the largest tax fraud scandals in the country before being mitigated on appeal in 2015.
The magazine said several Belgian lawmakers had asked the justice minister about the progress of cooperation with the French financial prosecutor who obtained the original “Dubai Securities”. The answer was that they would get copies of the papers once the IT expert could isolate all information about Belgium.
Source: French Press