The rapporteur general of the French Autorité de la Concurrence confirmed the operation was led by the investigation services team, saying the unannounced raids took place on 13 January, and involved an ‘operation of unannounced visits and seizures’ at audit and accounting firms.   

The individual firms were not named by the Autorité de la Concurrence, which  is responsible for ‘the fight against anticompetitive practices and cartels’.

The visits were authorised by a judge allowing seizure and detention of documents, and were the result of an investigation focused on audit firms ‘suspected of having put in place anti competitive practices in the audit sector and the certification [sign-off] of financial and non-financial data and reports’, the Autorité said.

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