Bernard Arnault, Chairman and CEO of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, attends a news convention to present the 2022 once-a-year final results of LVMH in Paris, France, January 26, 2023.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
The Paris community prosecutor’s office is investigating LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault around financial transactions involving Russian oligarch Nikolai Sarkisov.
French newspaper Le Monde noted Thursday, citing France’s Tracfin fiscal intelligence unit, that Sarkisov experienced bought serious estate at an Alpine vacation resort with the aid of a bank loan from Arnault.
The Paris prosecutor’s place of work confirmed Friday that a preliminary investigation had been underway because 2022, and that a Tracfin report “drawing the notice of the prosecutor’s business to functions relating to Mr. Bernard Arnault and Mr. Sarkisov, very likely to characterize acts of income laundering, has been attached to this course of action.”
The prosecutor’s business office declined to comment further on the ongoing investigations. A preliminary investigation does not always suggest wrongdoing, and Le Monde cited a close affiliate of Arnault as expressing the deal was carried out in the scope of French regulation.
Arnault, the founder, CEO and chairman of the world’s most significant luxurious goods enterprise and one particular of the world’s richest guys, shed a higher courtroom circumstance versus French tax investigators in February over the legality of a 2019 raid on LVMH’s headquarters. The raid related to a tax fraud probe connected to pursuits in Belgium.
Nikolai Sarkisov is a senior figure at his brother Sergei’s Russian coverage firm, RESO-Garantiya.
LVMH and RESO-Garantiya did not reply to CNBC requests for remark.