Netflix Europe Offices Raided in Tax Fraud Probe

Prosecutors and police investigators focused on tax fraud and corruption raided Netflix offices in Paris and Amsterdam on Tuesday as part of an ongoing probe into alleged financial wrongdoing, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

“From a judicial source, I can confirm that searches are being carried out today at various locations, including the headquarters of Netflix companies in France,” a spokesperson for the National Financial Prosecuters Office, a French judicial institution in Paris, told THR in a statement.

The searches were part of a preliminary investigation opened in Nov. 2022 to probe allegations of aggravated tax fraud and concealed work in an organized conspiracy. Also Tuesday, Dutch magistrates and investigators alongside French magistrates and investigators carried out searches at Netflix’s headquarters in Amsterdam.

“We can confirm that searches have been carried out in the context of a French legal assistance request,” a spokesperson for Dutch prosecutors with the National Office for Serious Fraud, Environmental Crime and Asset Confiscation Office told THR.

French and Dutch investigators have been working together on the Netflix European investigation as part of a probe coordinated by Eurojust. In Amsterdam, Dutch prosecutors with the National Office for Serious Fraud, Environmental Crime and Asset Confiscation carried out the Netflix headquarters searches in coordination with French authorities at the French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF).

Investigators at the PNF probe corruption and financial and tax crimes from a base in Paris.

Representatives at Netflix could not be reached for comment.

Netflix first came under scrutiny in France — a major European streaming market next to Germany and the UK — for its tax filings for the periods of 2019, 2020 and 2021, according to an August 2023 report in French newspaper La Lettre. Netflix’s French subsidiary was investigated starting in 2021 for allegedly reducing its tax obligations for its revenues generated in France by using a company in The Netherlands.

The French outlet claimed Netflix subscribers in France signed agreements with a Dutch subsidiary, Netflix International BV, to reduce the parent company’s tax charges in the 2019 and 2020 filing periods. La Lettre reported that Netflix posted far higher French revenues in 2021 when it began to account for its local subscriber base in France, and not in The Netherlands.  

That was followed by Netflix reaching pacts with France’s broadcasting authorities that would see the U.S.-based streamer invest 20 percent of its annual revenue in France on French content, in both TV series and movies, and separately with French cinema guilds to invest in French and European films. Netflix was in part responding to the French government having ruled that the streamer, like all TV networks in France, must invest in French content as a condition to operate in the country.