Salomé Lemasson auditioned by French senators on CumEx/CumCum strategies and potential criminal implications in France

Rahman Ravelli’s Salomé Lemasson was auditioned by the French Senate to discuss the thorny issue of dividend arbitrage stock trading strategies such as CumEx and CumCum and ons.

She was asked to address the Finance Commission of the French Senate to discuss potential criminal implications in France, as well as the tax and criminal risk exposure potentially arising out of these transactions. During this audition, Salomé detailed examples of how other jurisdictions, such as Germany, the UK or Denmark, approached this question and their respective enforcement strategies. She then answered questions from senators.

The Commission’s examination of France’s approach to tax evasion comes at a time when investigations into CumEx and CumCum are developing rapidly in a number of countries. Cum-Ex involved exploiting a loophole on dividend payments that enabled a number of parties to claim the same tax refund. Labelled as the “heist of the century”, these trading strategies cost up to €140 billions according to the latest assessments, out of which France lost €33 billion in tax revenues over 20 years.

The event, which was attended by high representatives of the French Tax Administration, the Financial Market Authority and the French Banking Federation, was streamed live on the French parliament’s TV channel, and is fully accessible here.