France seeks 3 years in jail for ex-minister

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s financial prosecutor on Wednesday sought a threeyear jail term for former budget minister Jerome Cahuzac, who was forced to quit government three years ago over the discovery that he owned a secret bank account abroad.

Cahuzac, 63, a plastic surgeon by profession who was appointed budget minister when Socialist President François Hollande took power in 2012, stands accused of tax fraud and money laundering.

“You have tarnished this country’s honor,” prosecutor Eliane Houlette said. “What has not been repaired, and will never be, is the harm done to our country, which became a laughing stock.”

She also asked for a fiveyear ban from seeking elected office.

Cahuzac’s downfall cast a pall over Hollande’s government in its first year, all the more so because he had stood up in parliament in December 2012 to declare: “I do not have and never had a foreign bank account, neither now nor before.”

The ex-minister, who had presented government proposals to clamp down on tax evasion in December 2013, quit three months later and admitted that he had indeed placed €600,000 ($667,000) abroad.

Judicial investigators later unearthed an account opened at Swiss bank UBS in the early 1990s that was later transferred to Singapore under the codename “Birdie.”