It could be a long time before investigators complete the analysis of data seized in the tax authorities' raid of Google's Paris headquarters, which resulted from a probe into suspected tax evasion.
"We have collected a lot of computer data," French financial prosecutor Eliane Houlette says. "We need to analyze (the data)... (it will take) months, I hope that it won't be several years, but we are very limited in resources."
This started with a complaint from the tax authorities in June of last year,” she says. "We treated in complete confidentiality, and we even decided to give another name to Google (tulip, because the parent company was domiciled in Holland) and work off-line. "We prepared a secret operation to do a surprise search on May 24 at the headquarters of the French branch of Google, with, in total, nearly a hundred people, who were able to collect a "considerable" mass of computer data – terabytes and "at least as much as Panama Papers - perhaps even more," said the national financial prosecutor.
€1.6bn in back taxes is claimed by the tax authorities. Using the data will take a long time says Eliane Houlette, regretting that investigators do not have "extremely powerful software" that would allow them to go "much faster ".