Former French budget minister Jerome Cahuzac may have resigned in disgrace in 2013 after admitting to having a secret Swiss bank account. But now, the ex budget minister is set to head on trial on Monday for tax fraud.
According to France 24, Cahuzac faces up to seven years in jail and two million euros or $2.2 million in fines if he is found guilty of stockpiling offshore of his earnings from a money-spinning hair-transplant business he operated with his now ex-wife. A media scrum is also set to come down to the court for the start of the trial.
This will happen even though the opening defense strategy is expected to lead to a delay of several months. The ex French budget minister's scandal made headlines for weeks, ruining the presidency of Francois Hollande. The presidential candidate had vowed to give a clean government after succeeding Nicholas Sarkozy, who is the subject of quite a few graft investigations.
The Cahuzac scandal proved that Hollande initially backed Cahuzac's heated denials after the Mediapart news website first broke the story in December 2012, posting a compromising audio recording. Cahuzac, on the other hand, whose remit had included cracking down on tax fraud, promptly lodged a defamation suit against Mediapart as reported by Yahoo! News.
But the trained surgeon, who wants to prove he's innocent resigned on his duty after a formal investigation was launched in March 2013. And two weeks after, he dramatically confessed to having held the account with Swiss banking giant UBS and said he was "consumed by remorse". Cahuzac was immediately hunted by the media, telling a newspaper he had to move "every two days" just to escape the issue.
The details of his personal tax evasion now threaten to be revealed. The court is expected to hear how the money came not just from Cahuzac's hair-transplant operations, but also from pharmaceutical companies who paid him for consultancy work and lobbying after he left an earlier job at the health ministry before Hollande's election. There are also expected to be details on how he withdrew cash from the account, before he became a minister, as claimed by The Guardian.
For now, Cahuzac's trial is considered as one of the biggest trials of the year. This is to begin on Monday with Cahuzac to face charges of fraud and tax evasion for laundering the proceeds.
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