VIDEO – The correctional court of Paris rendered its decision on Thursday morning after the trial of the former Budget minister for tax fraud and money laundering. In September, the prosecutors office, the national financial was required “not less than three years of prison with five years of ineligibility for election.
This is the end of a long series. The correctional court of Paris ordered Thursday morning Jérôme Cahuzac, 64, to three years in prison, without adjustment of penalty and, without warrant, filing, for tax fraud and money laundering. Four years after triggering the most resounding scandal of Hollande presidency, the former herald of the fight against tax evasion has also been sentenced to five years of ineligibility. His ex-wife Patricia was sentenced to two years in prison.
last September, the parquet national financier (PNF) had required against the ex-minister of the Budget, “not months to three years of jail with five years of ineligibility for tax fraud and money laundering. For his wife, Patricia, continued on the same charges, sentences (conversion) of two years imprisonment was requested.
The bank’s geneva-based Reyl, for his part, was sentenced Thursday to a fine of $ 1.875 million euros for having been “the instrument of the concealment of assets” of Jérôme Cahuzac. The establishment has been sentenced to the maximum sentence for money laundering, but has escaped a ban from carrying on any banking activity in France as requested by the public prosecutor. The banker François Reyl has been sentenced to one year suspended prison sentence and a 375.000 € fine.
A couple “grounded in fraud”
The hearing of September has fully laid bare the mechanisms that have allowed the couple of surgical specialists implants capillaries, “grounded in fraud” to conceal the tax department an amount estimated at € 3.5 million, but probably much higher, according to the PNF. The fruit of the crime was filed in Switzerland, the isle of Man or Singapore, or even on the bank account of Mrs Cahuzac mother, a former resistant who believed in good faith to render just service to his son – it was not pursued.
On the other hand, the trial has not helped to unravel the mystery of a man, minister of the Budget, which had been hunting for the fraudsters (like him) a battle horse. The court has not obtained of Mr. Cahuzac, causing a political scandal without precedent that has cracked the quinquennium of Francois Hollande in December 2012, the date of the revelations of Mediapart, explanations on the roots in the lie. It was not until the spring of 2013 that he resigns and confesses his package. Previously, he had sworn before the national Assembly that he had never held to account occult abroad.
A maze of discards without plume
The defendant has not made significant efforts to inform its judges. After having argued that he had opened an account in Switzerland in 1992 in order to accumulate in secret a treasury of war for the benefit of his mentor, Michel Rocard – “revelation” unprecedented and totally unverifiable, it was lost in a maze of discards without flag.
His two lawyers tried to dissuade the three judges of the 32nd criminal chamber to condemn their client at the prison farm. “I do not want my tax dollars being used to maintain Jérôme Cahuzac”, had argued Jean Veil, without knowing if he had to see in this formula trivial a dash of spirit little inspiration or a confession of helplessness – it seems that the accused did not inform his lawyers that he was going to serve at the court of the alibi Rocard, two months after the death of the former prime minister.
The judgment will be closely scrutinized, because of the strong symbolic value that it is. Éliane Houlette, attorney national financial, has justified the severity of the indictment pronounced with his deputy, the very scathing Jean-Marc Toublanc: “If the detention is common in cases of common law, it remains the exception in respect of infringements of financial. Gold they dig up the inequality, feeding the resentment of our fellow citizens and spread the idea that there is an impunity of the powerful.” While the law Fir 2 expands the skills of the PNF, the latter, created in the wake of the earthquake Cahuzac, plays its credibility on this issue founder and iconic.
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