Barely completed the G7 high mass, in Cornwall, from June 11 to 13, which kicked off the global tax supposedly, ultimately, to concern multinationals, his name is blacklisted in India, his country of origin. Rishi Sunak, UK finance minister, is splashed by a tax case in which his stepfather, billionaire Narayana Murthy is entangled (€ 3.1 billion in fortune, according to the magazine Forbes).
Monday June 14, The Guardian revealed that the latter, 74 years old and famous in the subcontinent for having co-founded in 1981 the IT services giant Infosys (260,000 employees), was being sued by the Indian tax authorities as the majority shareholder of Cloudtail, a trading company that has allegedly failed to pay value added tax (VAT) for four years.
It would now be claimed 545 million rupees (6.15 million euros) by the Indian tax authorities, including interest and penalties. The trouble is that Cloudtail is a joint venture set up in India in partnership with the American giant Amazon, one of the main world firms accused of practicing excessive tax optimization, and which precisely intends to target the future global tax enacted by the G7.
Key positions
Saturday June 12, on television, Rishi Sunak declared himself ” proud “ of this decision “Historical”, particularly “Adapted to the digital age” in that it aims to bring into line the GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon), among others. Cloudtail, which boasts a catalog of 3 million products on its website, sells exclusively on the American platform.
With 1.3 billion euros in turnover and 7.6 million euros in profits in 2020, it provides a very substantial share of purchases made by Indians on Amazon, to the point that an appeal has been filed. in front of the High Court of Karnataka, in Bangalore, where the in-laws of the British finance minister live. The Competition Authority suspects, in fact, Amazon of monopolizing online transactions through sellers that belong to it, to the detriment of small local operators.
Clearly, Cloudtail looks like a Trojan horse for Amazon, which, with only 24% of the shares in the capital (against 76% in the hands of the Murthy family), holds the key positions of executive director and director. financier of Cloudtail, while one of its former executives is the head of Prione, the holding company of Cloudtail.
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