French minister’s playboy son faces arrest in Vegas
‘Enfant terrible’ accused of writing $3.5M in bad cheques at casinos
PARIS The playboy son of France’s foreign minister faces arrest in the United States for spending US$3.5 million in a Las Vegas gambling frenzy only for his cheques to the casinos to bounce.
Nevada state court has issued an arrest warrant for Thomas Fabius following a criminal complaint over several bounced cheques.
Fabius wrote to three casinos on May 15, 2012 — the day before his father, Laurent Fabius, officially became foreign minister in Francois Hollande’s Socialist government. The affair, which broke in France on Thursday night, has rekindled Gallic fascination for France’s “enfant terrible,” whose penchant for gambling and the high life has been the only blot in his dour father’s otherwise exemplary political rebirth.
According to the court filings from April 2013, Thomas Fabius amassed heavy losses during his gambling binge in a number of Las Vegas casinos.
He is accused of passing bad
cheques from three different bank accounts.
This is not the first brush with the law for Laurent Fabius’s wayward son, whose playboy antics saw Paris Match magazine splash him on its front cover in 2013 waving a 500-euro bank note in a glitzy night club.
The 33-year-old is banned from frequenting casinos in France, where Société Générale bank filed a legal complaint against him in 2011 for writing a false email in its name in order for him to secure credit in a Marrakesh casino.