The former elected officials of Levallois-Perret have been convicted of laundering tax fraud. They were also fined 100,000 euros.
SourceAFP
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Lhe Balkany couple sentenced, after a third trial, devoted solely to the length of the sentences. The Paris Court of Appeal has therefore decided that Patrick and Isabelle Balkany receive respectively four and a half and three and a half years in prison, a fine of 100,000 euros and 10 years of ineligibility for laundering tax fraud. The court also ordered a total confusion of these sanctions with those of three years of firm imprisonment pronounced in the tax evasion aspect of the Balkany case.
“Neither he nor she will go or return to prison,” said Isabelle Balkany’s lawyer, Ms.e Pierre-Olivier Sur. “This is the end of the prison episode experienced by Patrick Balkany”, greeted Me Robin Binsard, one of his advisers. “He will be able to enjoy his old age with his wife. It is a sentencing judge who will determine the terms under which the couple, 74 and 75, will serve these additional months in prison.
In May 2020, the former LR mayor of Levallois-Perret and his ex-first deputy were sentenced on appeal to five and four years in prison, as well as the same fines and ineligibility. The Court of Cassation then definitively confirmed their guilt, but it partially annulled the decision and ordered a new trial solely on the length of the sentences.
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Two villas hidden from the tax authorities
On Monday, the Court of Appeal also pronounced the confiscation of the usufruct of the Cossey mill, in Giverny (Eure), where the 74 and 75-year-old couple currently resides and whose children are bare owners, for a maximum period of 30 years. They were finally ordered to pay 400,000 euros in damages to the State, an amount substantially reduced compared to the million euros pronounced in May 2020. In this part, the couple were found guilty of having concealed between 2007 and 2014 some 13 million euros in tax assets, including two sumptuous villas in the Caribbean and Morocco.
Patrick Balkany was also sentenced for illegal taking of interests, the justice having considered that he had benefited from “personal advantages” in kind within the framework of a large real estate contract of the city of Levallois-Perret, city of which he was mayor from 1983 to 1995 and then from 2001 to 2020.
A cassation appeal to come
Describing the measure of confiscation of the mill as “totally ridiculous”, Patrick Balkany told AFP that he was going to appeal again on this specific point. “I do not see my children remaining in joint ownership with the State […] all this is grotesque. » Me Sur a, he evoked a “Kafkaesque situation”. “The hypothesis” that the couple is forced to leave the premises “is not current”, estimated Me Binsard, noting, beyond the appeal in cassation, the complex determination of the “modalities” of this confiscation.
The former elected officials were serving the sentences imposed for tax evasion under an electronic bracelet until this measure was withdrawn from them in February 2022 due to numerous shortcomings. The former baron of Hauts-de-Seine, who had already spent five months in prison in 2019-2020, was reincarcerated for six months, from February to August. His wife, who was hospitalized for a long time, was not placed in detention. She will soon be summoned before a sentence enforcement judge in Évreux, the prosecutor told AFP.