Jérôme Cahuzac, the minister who led François Hollande’s drive for a more honest tax system, has been sentenced to three years in prison for tax fraud and secretly stashing his wealth in tax havens around the world.
But in 2013 he was forced to admit he had hidden his own money in an account in Switzerland for 20 years and lied about it to parliament.
Cahuzac and his ex-wife, Patricia Ménard, who was also jailed, jointly ran a hair-transplant business treating some of France’s biggest celebrities. They were found guilty of tax fraud, tax evasion and laundering the proceeds. They hid millions of euros from the tax authorities for two decades, moving their money across the world from Switzerland to Singapore and the Isle of Man.
Cahuzac furiously denied the allegations. In a four-month campaign to protest his innocence, he lied to parliament, saying he had never hidden money in Switzerland. He went on all major television stations to continue this lie and was said to have reassured Hollande he was telling the truth. The government stood by him for months, including when he resigned claiming he was innocent and needed to devote himself to fight the allegations.
Then Cahuzac made a sudden public confession in April 2013, saying he did have the account; had defrauded the taxman and had been “caught in a spiral of lies”. There could not have been a more damaging scandal for the left.