{"id":137959,"date":"2023-10-29T17:03:39","date_gmt":"2023-10-30T00:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=137959"},"modified":"2023-10-29T17:03:39","modified_gmt":"2023-10-30T00:03:39","slug":"lycamobiles-french-company-bosses-fined-and-jailed-for-money-laundering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2023\/10\/29\/lycamobiles-french-company-bosses-fined-and-jailed-for-money-laundering\/","title":{"rendered":"Lycamobile\u2019s French company bosses fined and jailed for money laundering"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy The Sunday Times<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Lycamobile\u2019s French companies were on Thursday fined 10mn euros by a Paris court for money laundering and value-added tax (VAT) fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The group\u2019s former chief executive officer Christopher Tooley also received a prison sentence and a heavy fine for complicity in the VAT fraud, agency reports said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lycamobile, owned by Subaskaran Allirajah, has said it disagreed with the decision and had appealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Four months after the trial ended, the court ruled that the companies had knowingly participated in a complex and elaborate system of money laundering\u201d between 2014 and 2016, which involved 17mn euros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This system involved a series of shell companies, two Lycamobile salespeople and resellers in the Parisian district of La Chapelle, the reports said. It operated for the benefit of construction companies demanding cash to illegally pay employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The companies were also found guilty of having deceived\u201d the tax authorities in a misguided\u201d legal regime allowing exemption from VAT, within the framework of a strategy\u201d to be more competitive\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The money laundering accusations concern the activities of two salespeople who were laid off and fired upon discovery of this parallel activity,\u201d Lycamobile said. Lycamobile Services was fined 3mn euros and Lycamobile France 7mn euros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mr. Tooley was sentenced to three years\u2019 imprisonment and fined 250,000 euros. He is banned from managing a business for five years. The group\u2019s other British leader, Andrew England, was released.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lycamobile\u2019s General Manager in France, Alain Jochimek, was sentenced in both parts of the case, to three years in prison, including eighteen months to be served under an electronic bracelet, with a fine of 120,000 euros. He was also prohibited from managing a business for five years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy The Sunday Times Lycamobile\u2019s French companies were on Thursday fined 10mn euros by a Paris court for money laundering and value-added tax (VAT) fraud. The group\u2019s former chief executive officer Christopher Tooley also received a prison sentence and a heavy fine for complicity in the VAT fraud, agency reports said. Lycamobile, owned by Subaskaran [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}