The former Minister of Finance, Jérôme Cahuzac, indicated this Monday that he would not rule out a possible return to politics via a local or national mandate. In 2018, he was sentenced for tax fraud to four years in prison, two of which were suspended, and five years of ineligibility.
Former socialist minister convicted of tax evasion Jérôme Cahuzac believes on Monday that he “has paid off his debt” and is not “holding back” on a possible return to politics, via a local or national mandate. “Doing politics is the conquest of power and it is public action. Public action can only be exercised with legitimacy, that is to say with a mandate. It is clear that I am not forbidding myself anything”, declared on France inter the former mayor of Villeneuve-sur-Lot, aged 71.
Jérôme Cahuzac denied “eye to eye” in front of the deputies that he had a hidden account abroad after the Mediapart revelations in 2013. Five years later, he was sentenced in 2018 for tax fraud to four years in prison, including two suspended sentences, and five years of ineligibility. “I paid for this lie with social banishment. I paid for the illegalities of prison and fine,” he stressed. “Having paid off my debt, I have regained all of my rights (…), the right to think, to express myself,” he explained.
On the political level, the former Minister of the Budget, excluded from the Socialist Party, denounced the “submission” of his former party to LFI to “save a few seats of deputies”. “They sold all the governance and all the spirit of responsibility, all the record of the party over the last 40 years,” he denounced. According to him, Nupes puts the left in “the absolute inability to regain power”.