Offices of streaming giant Netflix in Paris and Amsterdam have been raided by French and Dutch authorities as part of a tax fraud investigation, French judicial sources say.
Officials from the two countries have been working together on the case since the investigation opened in November 2022.
Netflix has not yet commented specifically on the raids, but insists it complies with tax laws wherever it operates.
The Amsterdam office is the headquarters of the company’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
The French investigation is being conducted by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), a special unit used for investigations into high-profile white-collar crimes.
This concerns suspicions of “covering up serious tax fraud and work off the books”, according to the PNF.
The company is also under investigation for tax returns for 2019, 2020 and 2021.
The French sources said authorities in the Netherlands were carrying out simultaneous searches and that cooperation between the two countries had been going on for “many months”.
Last year, French media outlet La Lettre reported that Netflix in France has kept its tax payments to a minimum until 2021 by declaring sales generated in France to the Netherlands.
After leaving this arrangement, La Lettre said, annual sales in France rose from 47.1 million euros in 2020 to 1.2 billion euros in 2021.
However, the outlet says investigators are trying to determine whether Netflix has continued to try to minimize its profits beyond 2021.
Netflix arrived in France more than a decade ago and opened its Paris office in 2020. According to news agency AFP, the company has about 10 million subscribers in the country.
