Government gives green light to removal of Bercy lock

The lock Bercy will jump. Gérald Darmanin, Minister of Public Accounts, confirmed this Wednesday on the set of BFMTV: "For a century, Bercy has the monopoly to decide whether to file a complaint or not. Until now, it was Bercy who considered what was or was not the most serious case. There has clearly been a significant amount of criticism on this lock. I suggested that it be the parliament that sets criteria and (Emilie) Cariou tabled an amendment (in this sense) that I will support. And the majority will probably vote, "he said.

MP Emilie Cariou (LREM) was responsible for piloting an information mission on the lock Bercy. It had submitted in May a parliamentary report proposing to review in depth this lock whose opacity was regularly criticized by parliamentarians, badociations and magistrates. At the beginning of July, during the examination of the text at first reading, the Senate struck the first blow to this mechanism, by putting into the law three cumulative criteria for the transmission of cases to justice: a high amount of fraud (set by decree in Council of State), the application of penalties of at least 80%, and the reiteration of the facts.

The amendment proposed by Emilie Cariou goes further by introducing a "mechanism of automatic transmission of the most serious cases", "selected according to objective criteria established in the law". Transmission to the judge will therefore be done without prior consultation of the Commission des Offenses Fiscales (CIF), currently responsible for preselecting files. For less serious cases, that is to say on amounts defrauded less than 100,000 euros, but nevertheless considered sufficiently problematic by the administration to justify a transmission to the floor, the CIF will remain consulted.

Twice more of files sent to justice

This amendment will be proposed this Wednesday to the deputies who examine the bill against tax fraud in Finance Committee. If it is adopted, it will amount to "remove the lock Bercy," says Gerald Darmanin. "This is a major development, because the administration will no longer play the role of a prosecutor, which was criticized. It is the prosecutor himself who will examine the desirability of prosecution, "adds Emilie Cariou, in the columns of Echoes . Note that the amendment also provides new rules in the case of tax evasion discovered in the margin of an investigation into another offense: the judge concerned can then directly pursue tax fraud.

Today, fewer than 1,000 cases, out of the approximately 50,000 inspections carried out each year, are transmitted to the courts. According to the member, with this new framework, "we will certainly double the number of tax files that we will automatically send to justice". Not enough to clutter the courts, she says. "This procedure will not necessarily result in 2000 complaints. The prosecutor may consider that the financial penalties are sufficient and that it is not necessary to prosecute, "she confided to Echoes .

This amendment has already received a favorable opinion on the part of socialist senators that this is a "first step towards greater transparency and justice". "After having twice refused this year the removal of the lock Bercy, the government finally seems to decide to remove this procedure," they said, saying that "the conditions of the new device" will "continue to be improved." The bill on tax evasion will be examined by the National Assembly before a final vote of the text in September.