Celebrity economist ‘beat up female lover’
HIS glamorous media image and radical ideas have seen him dubbed the ‘rock star’ economist.
But Thomas Piketty, whose book, Capital In The Twenty-First Century has become an international phenomenon, is a woman beater, an ex-lover has claimed.
Aurelie Filippetti, 40, France’s glamorous Culture Minister, had a relationship with Mr Piketty, 42, which she alleges came to a violent end.
A Socialist Party source, who was close to the couple when they shared a flat on Paris’s South Bank, said: ‘The details of what Thomas did to Aurélie are quite shocking – they drove her to contemplate suicide.’
Records show that on February 6, 2009, Ms Filippetti attended a Paris police station to lodge a complaint about an attack.
Mr Piketty was investigated for ‘violence between domestic partners’ – a crime that carries a jail term of to 14 years. At the time, Ms Filippetti was a spokeswoman for the Socialist Party, which Mr Piketty was advising.
An investigating officer confirmed: ‘The complaint was examined very thoroughly. There was clear evidence of very violent and repeated abuse. The accuser was in a very distressed state on the day she attended the police station and did not leave until close to midnight.’
Mr Piketty was formally charged on March 17, 2009. But the politician then asked for the charges to be dropped.
Mr Piketty, a professor at the Paris School of Economics, last night he confirmed he had been arrested and held in custody but disputed the allegations: ‘The case closed five years ago. There was no factual or legal basis to pursue it.’
Her spokesman said: ‘Mr Piketty has recognised the facts of the violence against Ms Filippetti and apologised, so in the interests of family and children she did not proceed.’