THE REVENUE COMMISSIONERS has made settlements with 19 Irish residents totalling some €4.3 million on foot of information provided by the French Finance Ministry.

Under EU law and double taxation agreements with countries including France, officials in Paris have provided information to Revenue in relation to a list of 33 Irish residents.

Of these, 19 of the cases were settled, yielding some €4.3 million. Enquiries are ongoing in six other cases while eight cases have been closed as no outstanding tax issues were established.

In addition, one prosecution is before the courts and three other cases are under investigation with the possibility of prosecutions.

Finance Minister Michael Noonan revealed the information in response to a parliamentary question from Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty last month.

Doherty had asked if the Department of Finance has received a list of suspected tax evaders from the French government or any other government.

Noonan said that information from other governments is usually exchanged either on request – where Revenue identifies a case and asks for information from another country – or spontaneously – where officials in other countries discover the information and inform authorities here. Automatic checks are also possible.

In the cases outlined above the information was provided spontaneously, Noonan said.

The Minister also revealed that other countries which Ireland has tax treaties with, including Australia, the UK and the US, “have obtained a very significant amount of data revealing complex offshore structures”.

He said that the countries intend to share this information with other countries including Ireland, but said that it will take “some time” to do this because of the “complexity of the data”.

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