A judicial investigation is intended the family of the creator of the crystal clear water. Revelations, of the west Indies in Luxembourg.

You might remember this older man is starring at the tv, assuring the public that its water was sparkling thanks to its bubble-na-tu-real ! For years, the billionaire Pierre Papillaud has paid with his person for extolling the benefits of the mark Rozana that he held , to the sides of crystal clear, Chateldon, or Vichy Célestins. Boss of an empire – # 3 of the bottled water behind Nestlé and Danone, he was known for his lilting accent, his straight talk, his rants, his management methods criticized – to the point that a manager who had attempted suicide had filed a complaint against him and, above all, had managed to initiate against him a criminal investigation for stalking…

But the industrialist, who died in June 2017, was less known for his penchant to put his socks (or rather, his enormous fortune out of the eyes of the tax man. Unfortunately for him, the “Panama Papers” have revealed in 2016 that he resorted to the services of the famous firm of panama Mossack Fonseca, the company who was in charge of making montages offshore for hundreds of thousands of customers. Pierre Papillaud held in a friendly confetti of the west Indies, the british Virgin islands, a company, Krewitt, in which slept around 400 000 euros. This has not failed : a preliminary investigation was opened by the Parquet national financier (PNF). And investigators soon discovered that, in reality, this is not in the sun of the Caribbean that the fortune had been moved, but in Luxembourg : a family holding company, Rox Invest, serves as the repository for a large part of his savings, including the dividends paid each year by the group. According to a court order, the evaded amount of the ISF by the emperor of mineral water between 2009 and 2014 would be 7.6 million euros.

life Insurance of € 52 million

In February 2017, Papillaud is therefore to be understood, in Nanterre, by the judicial police. Was his habit, he plays cat and mouse with his interlocutors. The Express has reconstituted the substance of one of the exchanges :

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– do you Have life insurance policies ?, ask him the investigators.

– I have been advised by Société générale Luxembourg to have a life insurance policy, I think that there must be 100 000 and a few euros on it.

– there is not another life insurance which would be much more important ?, insists the police.

” No, enlighten me.

– A life insurance policy in which there would be 52 million euros ?

– Oh, no, no, no.

And the police for flashing under the nose of Papillaud the contract to which it is a beneficiary, and the balance of which is, in effect, to 52 million… as Crafty as a monkey, the person changes the subject, before coming back on this bank, all the same, has been pampered for years. It is true that there was a fortune to fester… That said it still ?

” My son told me to turn the Society in general, but you have no idea of the difficulty of changing accounts. [sic] is that there are 300 million on these accounts ! Can you imagine, said he, aloud, in front of police, that the bank suggested that I open an account in Gibraltar ?

And the gloss on its companies in the State of Delaware (United States), the Seychelles, the Virgin islands or in Guernsey, dedicated to the management of an aircraft, or a manor house in Scotland, as well as on the role of the subsidiary of SocGen, Luxembourg Société générale Bank & Trust (SGBT), whose documents published by the “Panama Papers” would seem to show the key role. The PNF has therefore logically directed its inquiry to the practices of this discreet establishment of the Grand Duchy.

Search in Luxembourg

As The Express can reveal this, a long search was conducted in October 2017 by the justice of luxembourg, under the leadership of judge Stéphane Pisani, at the request of France, in the premises of the SGBT. Employees were interviewed, the computers, searched, and investigators seized a number of paper documents related to the fortune of Papillaud. To his misfortune, the bankers kept all bank statements, documents, domiciliation, accounting, invoices, and even a book manuscript held by an employee.

The emperor of the water received in Paris the bank statements of his accounts at the Luxembourg confidential letter – a sealed envelope, itself enclosed in another envelope wider, and then stored in a safety deposit box. Sometimes, an employee of the SGBT made the trip up to the town of Alençon, in the premises of Papillaud. To what extent is the subsidiary of SocGen has been implicated in these fixtures ? Especially, she checked with her rich client, if the latter was in good standing with the inland revenue ? It is the preliminary investigation to determine this. The justice of luxembourg confirms The Express have received 5 letters of the PNF on the record since the may 19, 2017.

In any case, the assistant of Pierre Papillaud, interviewed in police custody – his lawyer has not responded to our solicitation -is not embarrassed to declare that SGBT had “many involved in the creation of montages”. She told that she was the “accounting” and dealt with the legal problems of the family holding company of its patron, travelling twice a year with him to Luxembourg for an appointment at the bank’s headquarters. There, Papillaud was time to soliloquer about the concerns posed by the management of these foreign companies : “what is this mess !” he exclaimed regularly.

“proactive Action in the fight against fraud”

Then, in may 2016, before the senate investigating committee on the evasion of capital, the boss of Société générale, Frédéric Oudéa, had assured that his bank had closed its subsidiaries in tax havens, in 2017, offshore companies mounted using Mossack Fonseca were always maintained in the premises of the bank in Luxembourg. To Patrick Suet, its president, interrogated by the press in march 2017, the orders opened via the firm of panama, had been “terminated”, except the few in which the fence was, he said, “unfinished”. Has The Express, the bank shall be liable to comply “strictly all rules and regulations, including tax, in countries” in which it is embedded, and conduct “for many years, a proactive action in the fight against tax fraud and tax evasion” with its customers.

A small part of his fortune has been confiscated to the heirs of the emperor of water : a small life insurance on the CIC and a few million euros on bank accounts and securities accounts in France, seizures confirmed by the court of appeal of Paris in November 2017. That may members of the family Papillaud, always stakeholders of the company in Luxembourg ? Their lawyer did not want to be express in The Express. In any case, the patriarch will have not left a fortune hidden in Luxembourg, but also a multitude of problems to be solved…