A former French minister responsible for fighting fraud has begun to stand trial for tax fraud.
Jérôme Cahuzac became President Hollande’s budget minister in 2012. His remit included fraud and he launched an aggressive drive to punish rich people who failed to pay tax.
By 2013 Cahuzac had resigned in disgrace after being forced finally to admit to being shocked, shocked that he had had more than €600,000 squirreled away in a secret Swiss account for 20 years. Moreover, he had lied about it to parliament.
Mr Cahuzac, 63, faces charges of fraud and tax evasion for laundering the proceeds. If convicted he could face up to seven years in prison and a €2m fine.
He had been a successful cardiologist before turning to plastic surgery and running the leading hair-transplant clinic in 1990s Paris. As a minister, he achieved a high profile and was very popular.
Patricia Ménard, Cahuzac’s former wife who worked at his clinic, is also on trial for hiding €2.5 million in another account, along with their advisers, a Geneva banker and a Dubai-based lawyer.
But his world was to come tumbling down after an investigative website, Mediapart, alleged that he was a major tax cheat.
When it appeared that banking privacy in Switzerland was ending, Cahuzac went to Geneva to see that the funds were transferred to Singapore via the Seychelles. The action was just before he became head of the parliamentary finance commission in February 2010, Mediapart said.
He failed to hide his tracks when he left a voicemail message with a political rival worrying about how to hide his money elsewhere.
The Reyl bank of Geneva, which in 2009 allegedly helped Cahuzac transfer funds to Singapore to avoid detection by French tax authorities, is also being tried.
The scandal saw Hollande initially backing Cahuzac's vehement denials after Mediapart first broke the story in December 2012, posting the compromising audio recording.
After an official investigation was launched in March 2013, the minister stepped down in order to fight what he said were false allegations.
But in a spectacular turn-around in April 2013, he confessed to having the secret account, saying he was “trapped in a spiral of lies” and “consumed by remorse”.
The case has caused a sensation in France, but has damaged Hollande and his socialist party who came to power promising to be squeaky clean, although there is nothing to suggest that Hollande knew about the matter.
Hollande has since introduced a raft of measures to tighten controls on financial corruption, and ethics and transparency in politics. He ordered his ministers to disclose their personal wealth, a first in France, where the wealth of public officials had long been considered a private matter.
