French prosecutors are investigating financial transactions involving Bernard Arnault, head of the LVMH luxury empire, and Nikolai Sarkisov, a Russian insurance businessman, the Paris prosecutor's office said on Friday.
An investigation has been opened in 2022, and it is still in its preliminary stages, the prosecutor's office said. No one has been charged, and no charges have been filed.
The French government's intelligence unit had flagged the financial transactions to determine whether they could be considered as money laundering, the prosecutor's office said.
The existence of the investigation was only made public this week, after Le Monde, the French newspaper, reported that the French authorities were looking into the purchase of more than a dozen properties in Courchevel, a ski resort in the French Alps, through a complicated web of shell companies.