Math Teacher With Ties to French Mob on Trial for $478 Million Tax Scam

An ex-math teacher turned Marseilles piano-bar manager who claimed links to Corsica’s underworld allegedly spearheaded a 385 million-euro ($478 million) tax scam and spent part of the proceeds on Beverly Hills real estate.

A day before the cross-examination of Christiane Melgrani, 59, was set to begin at her trial in Paris investigators admitted that they’ve lost track of nearly half the money. She denies the charge of being a ringleader in the biggest part of scams involving taxes on carbon-emissions permits that’s cost the French about $2 billion, blaming two dead men instead.Emmanuel Dusch, one of the main investigators in the probe, said Monday at the Paris criminal court that Melgrani and one of her co-conspirators were wiretapped discussing ways to foil and slow down international investigations concerning offshore bank accounts. For the most part, their plan was successful.
“Due to the time limit on storing bank data we have a gap of several tens of millions of euros,” Dusch said. “There are ways to slow down international investigations with certain legal submissions.”

Honk Kong Account
Investigators say in the indictment that they weren’t able to trace the final beneficiaries of 154 million euros from the scam that went to a Hong Kong account at Standard Chartered Plc because they were unable to obtain any data from the bank before April 1, 2009. Standard Chartered didn’t respond to requests for comment on the matter.