French tax employee is suspected of selling data to crypto investors, 2026/01/10 10:55:41

In France, an employee of the tax department of the Ile-de-France region, Ghalia C., is suspected of transmitting confidential data from tax databases. According to investigators, she leaked information about cryptoassets to criminal groups.

The official illegally gained access to the Mira database, a system designed to work with confidential tax files. However, she did not have any professional grounds for such requests, law enforcement officers note. 

Among the potential victims whose personal data was transferred to the attackers were prison employees, public figures (in particular, Vincent Bolloré), as well as crypto-investors, whom the criminals considered as priority targets for extortion. 

According to investigators, Galia received payments for data transfer through Western Union. The scheme came to light after one of the prison employees whose data was sold was attacked. 

The story of the transfer of tax information arose against the backdrop of a boom in attacks on cryptocurrency owners. Thus, on January 5, in the city of Manosque, three masked men broke into a woman’s house in order to obtain access codes to her partner’s cryptocurrency wallet. The criminals searched the house, stole a USB drive with data on digital assets and fled before the police arrived.

European countries have begun to actively combat illegal income received from transactions with cryptocurrencies. On January 1, the DAC8 law came into force in the European Union, which allows tax authorities to automatically receive data on local cryptocurrency transactions. In addition, since mid-2024, the MiCA regulation has been in force in the Eurozone, which limits operations with stablecoins and makes them more transparent for government agencies.

At the same time, it is stablecoins that now account for 84% of shadow transfers, according to analysts from Chainalysis.