‘Operation Tulip’ Takes Prosecutors Offline for Google Tax Raid
- Confidentiality needed given Google’s activities: prosecutor
- It’s a fight between David and Goliath, Houlette tells Europe1
A police car outside the Paris offices of US Internet giant Google on May 24.
Photographer: Matthiue Alexandre/AFP/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
French investigators avoided the Internet, stuck to word processors and renamed Google ‘Tulip’ to prevent leaks as they prepared a secret tax raid at the company’s Paris offices last week.
“We decided to never utter the word ‘Google,’ to give the firm another name” and “we worked on this case fully offline for nearly a year,” Eliane Houlette, the financial prosecutor, said in a Sunday interview on French radio Europe1.