This is one of the consequences of the crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic: 2,400 scams have already been reported to the police. In this batch, it is for the investigators to detect false rescues of companies in difficulty, whose purpose would be to take control in secret of bankrupt businesses and companies, in order to launder dirty money. A very discreet anti-money laundering intelligence structure has therefore been set up in recent months. This is unprecedented in France. 

Interview with Corinne Bertoux, Deputy Head of the Sub-Directorate for the Fight against Financial Crime at the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police.

FRANCE INTER : More than six months after the start of the coronavirus crisis, how are organized crime and mafias trying to take advantage of the situation ?

CORINNE BERTOUX : With our Spanish, Italian and German counterparts, we knew immediately that organized crime was going to try to take advantage of this windfall of the "Covid crisis", which we were going to see fake companies, dormant companies etc. to recover the public financial windfall.

In France alone, we are at 2400 reported facts, which represents about 30 million euros. 

And on Europe in total ?

CORINNE BERTOUX :  These are gigantic mannas. We know, in some sectors at its worst, that there have been effects of individual opportunities to defraud short-time working aid. But for the rest, they are very well organized groups that have sought to defraud the states concerned and then make disbursements abroad to countries that are more porous in the fight against money laundering.

Researchers in Milan have been able to establish that mafia groups arrive from Switzerland with cash cases to take control of businesses or companies, what about France ?

CORINNE BERTOUX : We suspect that some companies in France will not have access to loans guaranteed by the State. Therefore, there is a real risk of penetration of the legal economy by organized crime. The risk is that companies that are at a loss will be approached by organised crime to take de facto control without even needing to change their status or manager,  and organised crime must not take over the legal economy. This is our strongest fear. 

Have there been any reports, are there any cases pending ?

CORINNE BERTOUX : For the moment with regard to the France in any case, there have been massive emergency aid plans; these phenomena that we fear will probably arise at the end of the year, at the beginning of next year. 

This is why within the Sub-Directorate for the Fight against Financial Crime, Sirasco Financier  (the financial criminal intelligence service) has set up a special mechanism on these future risks in partnership with other institutions, including the commercial courts, judicial administrators, the financial markets authority, for exchanges of information in order to detect weak signals. This should allow us to identify a number of criminal groups that would be at the forefront of takeovers by dormant companies, to identify companies that are changing rapidly in recent times. You will understand that I do not wish to give more details. 

Do you intend to use a legislative weapon on a massive scale, that of "alleged laundering" ?  

CORINNE BERTOUX : French legislation on money laundering is up to international standards and we will also be audited again in the coming months by the FATF, the financial action group (college of experts that audits states to gauge their ability to fight against financial crime, including money laundering and terrorist financing).

With the various existing task forces , we are strengthening our ability to identify criminal assets; and yes, indeed, we have a powerful  tool in our legislation with " suspected laundering". It is in fact a reversal of the burden of proof. That is to say, it is up to the natural person, the legal person to demonstrate to us where the suspect money discovered and / or reported and its legality comes from.

All available tools will be used depending on the importance of the surveys. The platform for the identification of criminal assets also has its own networks at European and international level,  which makes it possible to quickly  identify assets abroad.  Above all, there is great international cooperation, as we have seen with our Israeli colleagues in the midst of confinement where we have been able to carry out flagrant offences. That is how criminal funds can be frozen.

So for now, no case of suspicious company buyouts with investors who arrive with briefcases of tickets?

This is precisely what we are monitoring, and if it were to happen, it will be rather at the end of the year, at the beginning of next year when we will find a more "normal" economy, when there will be less direct support from the States. We already know, however, that criminal organizations are adapting very quickly to the new economic situation, with service providers, very specialized financial companies that are on the lookout for brand new legislation and their possible loopholes in which they will be able to engulf themselves.  We are very vigilant, for example, on the current multiplication of so-called "neo banks" (online banks), "crypto assets" (digital assets)  because we know very well that they can be used by organized crime.  And so we will prepare to be able to intercept criminal operations, at the right time. 

In the meantime, we are trying to detect the modus operandi that will emerge. Again, I will not tell you more, but we are currently strengthening all our protocols with our partners to establish this prevention against money laundering.

You and your services worked on the first major money laundering cases revealed in France, about ten years ago, related to drug trafficking. At Europol's headquarters in The Hague, it was realised that we had moved to enormous industrial levels of capacity to launder the drug agent.  Did this surprise you?

CORINNE BERTOUX :  No, it doesn't surprise us that it has become so fast for such money supply. It is for this reason that we must continue to harmonise our systems and further improve our legislation and simplify them. After this phase of prevention, our forces will be able to carry out repression, more effective and above all faster. We know that there are the little hands of money laundering, the financial mules,  all this journey from border to border. Lawyers, accountants and bailiffs may also be involved, and the great fear is that a certain amount of financial engineering will be put at the service of organised crime, that these criminal groups, some of whose known  assets, will come to bring 'their own money', their supporters.  Because there is always a quid pro quo. It will be money laundering, overbilling, concealed work, a whole bunch of illegal abuses. We, it is above all the sponsors who matter to us as a priority (most of the time installed far from the European Union), which is why it is absolutely necessary to strengthen cooperation between states.