Ex-minister jailed for tax fraud French scandal comes to a close as former finance chief sentenced
AFORMER minister who led a French government crackdown on tax evasion was sentenced to three years in jail yesterday for hiding an offshore bank account of his own, in a scandal that deeply embarrassed President Francois Hollande.
A Paris court found Jerome Cahuzac, 67, a cosmetic surgeon by trade who was made budget minister when Hollande won power in 2012, guilty of tax fraud and money-laundering.
Cahuzac’s ex-wife, Patricia Menard, was given a two-year prison sentence for her role in stashing millions of euros abroad from the couple’s lucrative hair-transplant business.
The court also gave Francois Reyl, a Swiss banker, a one-year suspended prison sentence and fined him ß375 000 (R5.5million) for assisting the couple.
Reyl Bank was fined ß1.87million (R27-million) for money-laundering.
Cahuzac had admitted in evidence that he hid funds offshore to maintain his family’s standard of living.
The scandal was the first of a series that tarnished Hollande’s government and prompted him to order his ministers to disclose their personal wealth, a first in France, where the wealth of public officials had long been considered a private matter.
The story of the fraud, which took place between 1992 and 2013, reads like a cross between a cheap airport novel and an international financial crime manual.
In one episode, Cahuzac, using the codename “Birdie”, was said to have received two cash payments of ß10 000 (R149 000) on the streets of Paris.
The couple used a Royal Bank of Scotland account in the Isle of Man, an offshore financial centre in the Irish Sea, to channel cheques from English clients of their business.
Cahuzac initially denied the allegations and sued the Mediapart news website that broke the story in 2012.
Footage of the minister lying to parliament was repeated in an endless loop on French media after he finally confessed in April 2013 to having a Swiss bank account.
By the end of the trial, Cahuzac had repeatedly admitted his inexcusable wrongdoing.
As the couple’s marriage began to falter, Menard also opened a Swiss account.
Her lawyer, Sebastien Schapira, told the trial the money was “that of fraud, but initially it was that of her work, earned day after day, hour after hour, hair by hair”.
He described Menard as naive and an unwitting accomplice who was swept up in the fraud before confessing in December 2013.
Menard testified that the couple had become locked in a spiral of wrongdoing.
“I’m extremely ashamed of having done all that,” she said.