The Seychelles Revenue Commission (SRC) has confirmed that it has received to date 66 requests for information on French offshore entities incorporated in Seychelles.
France has been carrying out investigations into 500 offshore companies following the Panama Papers scandal three years ago which exposed illegal practices in the offshore finance industry.
According to an article published in August in the French newspaper Les Echos, 15 percent of the 500 cases were registered in Seychelles, a group of 115 islands in the western Indian Ocean.
Speaking to SNA, SRC’s senior interpretation and advise officer, Darrel Uranie, said Seychelles has received the requests for information from 2016 onwards. The requests were made under the Multilateral Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters Convention for Seychelles.
The agreement came into force on October 1st 2015.
“Because both Seychelles and France are a party to this agreement, they are therefore compelled to share information on any tax-related matter,” said Uranie.
He explained that once a request from the French authority is lodged, the Commission will contact other government entities which may have information related to the case.
Uranie added that information provided would include the registered agent of the company, the present status — whether it still exists or has been struck off –, the directors, memorandum of articles and association of the companies and certificate of corporation.
He added that once the information has been forwarded to the French Revenue Authority, “the only follow-up would be to find out how helpful the information has been to their investigation and not to ask about the revenue liability that arose.”
The Panama Papers refer to the 11.5 million leaked encrypted confidential documents that were the property of Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The documents were released on April 3, 2016, by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ).
