Patrick Bruel is best known as an artist of French song. On PokerCollectif and the community of poker players, it is also known as poker enthusiast. In his own words, it is a passionate Poker which, in 2009, resumed Winamax, British at that time. To do this, he allied with Marc Simoncini, founder of dating site Meetic, and Alexandre Roos and Christophe Schaming (two founders of Caramail older you will have perhaps experienced).
Today, Patrick Bruel is talking about him because he would be linked to illegal tournaments. It would have financed organizing tournaments of poker with money placed at the Luxembourg bypassing the french right. For more information on this subject, you can read the article cited below, but in short, this maneuver would be illegal in french and statutory law in European law. It would therefore be in a gray area. The first information obtained allow us to believe that there will be no prosecution.
In an article in the express Patrick Bruel explained his frustration with the proposal of François Holland tax 75% higher than EUR 1 million revenues. In his words: "it is not shameful to make fortune, hammered it. It is not shameful moment it redistributes, and it redistributes a lot. Not 50% of what you earn, it's already huge."
When Bruel started to invest his time and his money in Winamax, online poker room did not go very well. Today, it is part of the leaders in France. Its participation is today valued at 15 million euros.
From June 2010, Winamax won a license to operate in France. At this time, a portion of the profits of Winamax is paid to Oxley Properties, the mother of Winamax House located in a tax haven (Virgin Islands). Later, it will be in the Grand Duchy of the Luxembourg. Paying a portion of the profits in this localization is not illegal, but say that it facilitates tax avoidance. According to L'Express (supporting documents), 1.14 million euros have already been placed in the Luxembourg to fund organizing tournaments. "" When questioned on the issue of a possible tax evasion, Patrick Bruel defends himself: "I'm a shareholder, as this line managers who know the details."
Me Julie Jacob, computer law lawyer commented on this subject: "criticized Winamax or Bruel but could criticize many other sites. '' It is clear that french players were playing poker on the Internet before the legalization of the offerings of online games. Act, 2010 allowed to start from scratch and to impose severe constraints on the operators, with a priority: the regulatory authority of the games (Arjel) has ensured that there is no migration of accounts of players of a foreign (in .com) site to a french (.fr) website. »
The ARJEL said meanwhile that Winamax was clean from any point of view"when he received his licence. Precise Winamax have paid 30 million euros of taxes and various taxes in France in 2011.
In 2010, Winamax had a turnover of 39.8 M euro and showed the partes of EUR 16 million.
Discuss this news on PokerCollectif forums: Patrick Bruel and Winamax questioned by the taxman
