[Kell]

>this can happen in France given the way in which laws are prosecuted,

I am a French lawyer.

So I have to disagree. This is not the case here. The prosecutors are plainly saying that Google did something outright illegal by misinterpreting on purpose a clause in the French Irish tax convention.

According to the prosecutors in this case Google used a clause sheltering pure advertisement and research subsidiaries of Irish companies from having to pay French tax. But this clause is clearly intended to protect subsidiaries doing market research and advertising a product in advance of actually selling it in France (And also for subsidiaries doing purely informative business (tech support, warranty management etc.) and pure research).

So Google is saying that they do advertisement, so that this clause apply to them, but a reading of the part of the convention that was made public by the prosecutors, clearly show that this is apparently wrong. But the fact that I still haven't found the full convention is a huge caveat :).

So most of developed countries would have enough to prosecute.