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 Chief Executive Frederic Oudea and his bank have been thrust to the
fore of a controversy over usage of secretive tax havens since an
investigative news syndicate this month exposed leaked documents on
the activities of Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca.
The reports, based on 11.5 million leaked documents, put SocGen near
the top of a global list of banks creating shell companies in Panama
since the late 1970s, with a total of 979 created by the French
bank.
Oudea will meet Senate Finance Committee chief Michele Andre as a
prelude to broader Senate hearings of leading bankers and the
supervisory authorities on activities in tax havens, according to a
Senate statement.
Oudea was summoned to meet Finance Minister Michel Sapin last week
and tax police raided SocGen offices. Oudea and Didier Valet, head
of corporate and investment banking, private banking and asset
management, also met French unions on Monday to answer questions
about the Panama Papers.
"The information revealed by the Panama Papers showed that several
financial institutions made use of offshore companies, for their own
account or for clients, that may have been used to hide certain
assets or operations in so-called non-cooperative territories,
possible for tax reasons," the Senate statement said.
Asked by Reuters to comment on Tuesday, SocGen referred to a
statement it issued on April 4 saying it had closed its
establishments in Panama and other havens, and an interview in Le
Figaro newspaper in which the bank and Oudea said SocGen abided by
all the rules of the countries in which it operated.
The Senate has slated a meeting of its cross-party steering
committee for April 28 to examine the matter after accusations by
politicians that Oudea misled senators when giving testimony in
April 2012.
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At issue is a declaration during a Senate hearing on April 17, 2012
in which, according to an official transcript, Oudea said his bank
had closed operations in locations named in an OECD "gray list" of
bank centers deemed as lacking transparency.
Oudea said in the Le Figaro interview that one should not confuse a
structure owned and operated by the bank with companies owned by its
clients.
The news syndicate behind the Panama Papers revelations says it will
release more information in May but has so far not given detail of
the precise years in which SocGen created or closed shell companies.
Data released refer globally to the period 1977 to 2015 for a whole
range of banks. https://panamapapers.icij.org/graphs/
(Reporting by Brian Love; Additional reporting by Maya Nikolaeva;
Editing by Mark Potter)
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