Who Really Owns French Property?

To tackle the challenge of illicit funds entering French property markets, GACC facilitated a unique cross-border collaboration that identified highly problematic owners of French real estate and revealed gaps in the current transparency regime. 

In July 2023, OCCRP and its media partners, Le Monde (France), Armando.info (Venezuela), and Ojo Publico (Peru), unveiled findings about how alleged money launderers and officials accused of corruption from Venezuela, Peru, and Brazil acquired property in France. These figures included relatives of a former Venezuelan minister tied to suspected bribes from the Odebrecht scandal. The OCCRP story detailed all the cases: “The Luxury French Real Estate of Alleged Latin American Money Launderers and Officials Accused of Corruption”, and the other media partners ran stories that emphasised issues of national importance. 

On the same day, TI, TI France, and the Anti-Corruption Data Collective (ACDC) published a report titled "Behind a Wall." This investigation disclosed that nearly a third of legal entities in France bypassed the nation's reporting obligations, leaving properties in more than seven million land parcels anonymously owned. It also identified 166 Russian persons of public interest listed in the French beneficial ownership registry. The Russian-owned companies were more than twice as likely to be registered at a “mass address”: a key red flag in the company formation process. Additionally, TI Venezuela picked up the reporting on Venezuelan PEPs to further demonstrate how corrupt officials stash illicit funds overseas. 
All parties benefited from the collaboration. For instance, both sets of publications drew from the extensive efforts by ACDC and the Bureau for Investigative Reporting and Data (BIRD) to scrape the official company beneficial ownership register and real estate ownership data. TI’s identification of suspicious names in the data then informed the media groups’ reporting. 
The findings drew heavily on publicly available ownership data, demonstrating its immense value. But the reporting also revealed serious gaps and loopholes in the French system through which criminals and the corrupt are still able to abuse. 

Since the release of these reports, French authorities have taken notice and made initial responses. GACC will continue to prioritize the issue of illicit funds in property markets, in France and beyond.