When Tax Advisers and Intermediaries Become Targets in French Criminal Tax Cases

For years, criminal tax law in France mainly targeted taxpayers themselves, with advisers prosecuted only as accomplices in a limited set of situations.

This balance has changed: advisers, banks, platforms and even social‑media influencers can now be prosecuted independently for providing tools that facilitate tax fraud.

French Finance Law 2024 created a new offence in Article 1744 of the French Tax Code, and the French Tax Authorities have detailed how they intend to use it.

For any UHNW individual, entrepreneur or family office involved in complex international tax disputes involving France, this shifts the risk perimeter for the entire advisory ecosystem.

1. From accomplices to autonomous targets

Traditionally, advisers could be prosecuted as accomplices for tax offences, complicity in tax fraud or laundering the proceeds of tax fraud.

These prosecutions required a prior complaint by the tax authorities and proof of the underlying tax fraud.

In practice, this framework was heavy and rarely used, despite the growing role of sophisticated tax optimisation schemes in cross‑border cases.

The new offence of providing instruments to facilitate tax fraud changes that by allowing prosecutions that are partly autonomous from the underlying fraud.

2. The new offence: providing instruments to facilitate tax fraud

Article 1744 targets any person or entity that, for free or for a fee, provides legal, tax, accounting or financial means, services, acts or instruments intended to enable one or more third parties to fraudulently evade the assessment or payment of taxes.

This includes both internal services within a group and external advisory or marketing activities.

The offence is punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of €250,000, in addition to potential professional bans and reputational damage.

Importantly, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office can now take up these cases without waiting for a prior complaint from the tax authorities.

For clients, this means that the behaviour of their advisers, banks and service providers can itself trigger a separate criminal case alongside their own French criminal tax procedure.

3. Which behaviours are explicitly targeted?

The French Tax Authorities have given concrete examples of situations that fall within the scope of Article 1744.

They include:

• Intermediaries offering schemes for false tax residency abroad, where clients appear to live outside France while effectively remaining tax resident there.
• Arrangements designed to artificially inflate expenses or conceal part or all of a company’s revenues.
• The creation of fictitious tax credit applications, such as abusive R&D tax credit schemes.
• Overseas tax‑evasion structures, often involving foreign companies issuing fake invoices to French businesses.

For individuals, the authorities explicitly mention private social‑media accounts that encourage followers to obtain fraudulent income tax refunds, in exchange for access to their tax login and a commission.

For legal entities, they point to consultancy firms and banks promoting services for creating foreign structures that issue sham invoices or divert funds abroad.

In many of these scenarios, the same structures are also relevant to disputes about crypto‑assets and undeclared foreign accounts.

If you are an adviser, executive or family office involved in complex international tax disputes involving France, your personal exposure may now be distinct from, and sometimes higher than, your clients’.

DPZ Avocats offers a paid 45‑minute first consultation with Delphine Parigi to map your criminal risk under Article 1744, review existing structures and design a safer advisory and governance framework.

👉 BOOK A CALL : https://www.dpz-avocats.com/en/contact

4. Intent and evidence: what prosecutors must prove

Like tax fraud, the new offence is intentional: prosecutors must show that the adviser or intermediary knew or could not ignore that the instruments provided were meant to facilitate fraud.

However, they do not need to prove that the underlying tax fraud was fully executed or quantified.

Evidence will often come from:

• Marketing materials and pitches explicitly promising to “erase tax” or hide revenues.
• Email trails showing awareness of the artificial nature of the structures proposed.
• Repetition of similar schemes across a large number of clients with the same profile.

For many professionals, this raises the stakes of internal documentation: compliance notes, risk assessments and the way advice is framed may later be used in court to assess their criminal risk as advisers and intermediaries.

5. Impact on international structuring and wealth planning

In complex international tax disputes involving France, advisory teams often coordinate structures across several jurisdictions.

What used to be considered “aggressive but acceptable” tax planning can now be reclassified as the provision of instruments to facilitate fraud.

This is especially true when structures:

• Have no real economic substance apart from tax savings.
• Rely heavily on opaque trusts or holding chains, with no clear explanation to the client.
• Are combined with undeclared foreign accounts or crypto platforms.

UHNW clients and their advisers increasingly need to align wealth structuring, governance and criminal‑risk management, for instance through dedicated Dynasty‑type support.

6. How DPZ works with advisers and intermediaries

DPZ’s role is not limited to defending clients once an indictment is pronounced; it also consists in working with advisers, banks and family offices to redesign their risk perimeter.

This may include:

• Reviewing existing cross‑border schemes in light of Article 1744 and recent case law.
• Training management teams and front‑office advisers on red lines in French criminal tax law.
• Building internal protocols so that future Expansion plans remain within a defensible legal framework.

In active investigations, DPZ also coordinates the defence of the client and of key advisers, so that procedural choices and narratives do not undermine each other.

7. Key points if you are exposed today

If you are an adviser, executive or intermediary already under scrutiny:

• You can now be prosecuted even if the client’s fraud is not fully established, based on the instruments you provided.
• Marketing aggressively tax‑driven schemes, or tolerating opaque arrangements without real substance, can be enough to trigger Article 1744 risk.
• Your emails, slide decks and client memos will be central evidence in any French criminal tax procedure involving you.
• The earlier you review your exposure, the more options you have to adjust structures, exit risky schemes and protect both your practice and your clients.