French dairy group Lactalis searched over alleged tax fraud

PARIS (Reuters) -The offices of French dairy giant Lactalis were searched this week by members of France's PNF financial prosecutor body, as part of a long-standing probe into alleged tax fraud, said a judicial source, confirming earlier media reports.

Lactalis told Reuters the search took place on Feb. 6 as part of a probe of "old events already reviewed by authorities". It declined to give further details.

The amount of taxes involved over the period 2009-2020 is estimated at this stage at several hundred million euros, the judicial source said.

The PNF had opened an investigation in 2018 into "laundering charges of aggravated tax fraud" concerning Lactalis as it suspected a reduction of its taxable profit, the judicial source said.

It extended the investigation to "aggravated tax fraud" after receiving a report from farm union Confederation Paysanne in 2019 and denunciations from the tax administration in 2022, the source said.

When asked specifically about the charges, Lactalis declined to give any further comment.

The source noted that the searches at Lactalis had been planned for a long time and were thus unrelated to current social tensions in France. French farmers held over two-week long protests last month, staging hundreds of tractor blockades, to demand just prices and less red tape.

(Reporting by Geert de Clercq, Dominique Vidalon and Sybille de La Hamaide; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Tom Hogue and David Evans)