The Rouen Court of Appeal confirmed Thursday the revocation of the placement under electronic bracelet of the Balkany spouses, paving the way for the imprisonment of the former mayor LR of Levallois-Perret and his wife convicted of tax fraud, a-t -we learned from the prosecution and lawyers. Patrick Balkany’s lawyer, Me Romain Dieudonné, denounced in a press release a decision “worrying in law and in fact” because of his client’s state of health.
A “totally unfair decision”
Asked about BMFTV, Patrick Balkany denounced a “totally unfair decision”. He said his wife Isabelle, who had previously attempted suicide in 2019, was hospitalized on Thursday after swallowing medication. The decision of the Court of Appeal must now be sent to the Evreux public prosecutor’s office, which will be responsible for implementing it. The public prosecutor’s office was to publish a press release in the afternoon, according to a judicial source.
The Evreux sentence enforcement court decided in December to revoke the couple’s placement under electronic bracelets, following breaches in their mansion in Giverny (Eure), where they had been under house arrest since March. The Balkany spouses were in Giverny on Thursday afternoon, according to their lawyers. “There were other solutions for a 73-year-old litigant who has already lost everything in recent years and who cannot materially cope with what justice is asking of him today,” his lawyer was indignant. “I will soon submit a new request for sentence adjustment and will follow the evolution of his state of health day after day”.
A “new illustration of a symbolic justice”
Isabelle Balkany’s lawyer for her part denounced a “new illustration of a symbolic justice”. Patrick Balkany, 73, was previously imprisoned on September 13, 2019 after being sentenced for “massive tax fraud” to four years in prison. Very thin, he was released on February 12, 2020 for health reasons, with a light judicial review, after five months spent between the Parisian remand center for Health and the hospital.
Isabelle Balkany, 74, had for her part been sentenced to three years without a warrant, the court taking into account her state of health, after a suicide attempt in May 2019. On March 4, 2020, the Court of Appeal of Paris reduces Patrick Balkany’s sentence for tax evasion to three years, without sending him back to bars because of his state of health. His wife was then sentenced to the same sentence.