Lactalis announced last week that it would pay €475m to the French tax authorities to ‘end a dispute over international financing transactions’. These related to three subsidiaries set up in Belgium and Luxembourg in 2006 to finance Lactalis’ international expansion. According to the French tax authorities, the money that Lactalis had injected into the subsidiaries should have been taxed in France.
The transactions in question had been ‘closed for several years’, Lactalis explained on Thursday, saying that the group had ‘fully cooperated with the French administration throughout the proceedings initiated in 2019’ as it had ‘no criminal intentions whatsoever’. Around €300m had been set aside by Lactalis’ parent company BSA until the end of 2023 in relation to this tax dispute.
