NIDRA POLLER: FRENCH BUDGET MINISTER CAUGHT DODGING TAXES
d-intl.comhttp://www.d-intl.com/french-budget-minister-caught-dodging-taxes/
French Budget Minister caught dodging taxes
President Hollande’s government of exemplary virtue shattered
PARIS. One week after President Hollande spoke to the nation in a tepid sleep-inducing TV interview, a sort of fireside chat without a hearth, the Jérôme Cahuzac scandal exploded in his face, shattering his pretentions to govern with exemplary virtue. The disgraced Budget Minister, working under the authority of Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici and responsible for tracking tax evaders, does in fact have an undeclared account in a tax haven. The scandal was revealed on December 4th by Mediapart, a hard-hitting online newspaper to the left of the left, that digs up the truth and delivers it in strong righteous doses … available only to paid subscribers. Why did it take the Hollande government four months to confirm the rumor and rid itself of the offender? Commentators are tossing a coin to see if it comes up ineptitude or attempted cover up. It may be both.
Jérôme Cahuzac was a handsome young cardiac surgeon in 1988 when he was appointed head of the pharmaceutical division in the Health Ministry of the Mitterand government. After his first stint in politics he became a consultant to drug companies. He opened the Swiss bank account in 1992—the socialist Mitterand was still president—using as straw man a tax lawyer who is a friend of National Front leader Marine Le Pen.
In association with his wife, also an M.D. (divorce proceedings are currently underway), Cahuzac opened a hair transplant clinic while pursuing his political career. He campaigned with the socialist Lionel Jospin in 1995, was parachuted to Villeneuve-sur-Lot and elected deputy in 1997, voted out in 2002, re-elected in 2007, and has served as mayor of the town since 2002. After heading up the Finance Commission of the National Assembly under the previous administration, Cahuzac was brought into the squeaky clean government of François Hollande. He was known for rigorous, sometimes harsh budget management and relentless pursuit of tax dodgers. Making the rich pay their fair share is the very foundation of the Hollande government. The failed attempt to impose a 75 percent tax on yearly individual income over a million euros was glorified as a call for “fiscal patriotism”.
For the past four months Cahuzac has been vehemently denying the Mediapart accusation: face to face with his fellow cabinet ministers and the President, publicly to the media and Parliament. When the lumbering official investigation finally confirmed the tax evasion, Cahuzac confessed and resigned. He was excommunicated from the Socialist Party and enclosed within a sky-high firewall as calls arose for new elections (from the National Front’s Marine Le Pen), resignation of the PM and formation of a new government (Jean-François Copé, head of the UMP), dissolution of the entire operation and creation of a 6th République (Jean-Luc Melenchon of the Front de Gauche).
François Hollande, whose approval rating has sunk precipitously to 27 percent, was on his way to Morocco when the scandal broke. Looking like a Playmobil character he delivered a limp call for the “moralization of public [i.e., political] life”. Is he forgetting that he appointed the oft-defeated Lionel Jospin to a commission devoted to the said moralization? And the Swiss bank account of the now-pestiferous Cahuzac was fresh and bright in 1995 when he served on Jospin’s team?
The Cahuzac scandal was still flaming when another log was thrown on the fire: Jean-Jacques Augier, treasurer of Hollande’s presidential campaign, has some questionable holdings in the Cayman Islands connected to a business operation with Chinese partners. His “I didn’t do anything illegal” coupled with Hollande’s “I didn’t know anything about it” will not shine up the Socialist government’s tarnished reputation.
The media are flooded with claims that everyone Left, Right and Center, has known for years about Cahuzac’s shady deals and tax evading bank account, just as everyone knew about Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s sordid libertinage. If he hadn’t stumbled onto the Sofitel chambermaid he might well have been the Socialist candidate last year and president today. Socialists and their sympathizers have tried to muddy the waters with counter-accusations of corruption in the opposition party, which they hope will soon be revealed by Mediapart.
At this writing, François Hollande is still dithering while his ministers shovel renewed pretentions to virtue on the ruins: Interior Minister Manuel Valls claims the previous administration interfered with the judicial process to cover up its scandals while his Ministry virtuously refrained from conducting a parallel investigation that might have confirmed the Mediapart revelation. Neither naïve nor dishonest, the president, his cabinet, and all the state services stood like respectful butlers with their white-gloved hands crossed as the judicial investigation tiptoed to its shocking conclusion.
Yes, Jérôme Cahuzac does have an undeclared foreign account initially created at the UBS, then transferred from one Swiss bank to another until 2009 when (presumably in reaction to a crackdown on tax havens) it was sent to Singapore. Cahuzac reportedly provided a false certificate to Swiss authorities wary of hiding undeclared funds belonging to a French politician. At this point, the disgraced ousted Budget Minister, asks to be forgiven for lying about a balance of €600,000, carelessly left untouched in a Swiss bank for 20 years … like an old girlfriend he hasn’t seen for decades. Swiss journalists are saying the balance is more like €15 million.
The rise and fall of one corrupt politician would not in itself rock French society to its timbers. It is an aftershock. The façade has collapsed and the mess is clearly visible. The danger of sitting Humpty Dumpty Hollande on the national wall was not another round of Socialism à la Mitterand; it was the grave threat to national stability that comes from sweeping a small-time incompetent fake into the highest office on a wave of cant.
Hollande was packaged as the enemy of the rich (he and his ex-concubine Ségolène Royal amassed fortunes while doing nothing but politics), the friend of the little man, the solution to the economic crisis that was blamed on his rival Nicolas Sarkozy. Hollande’s mediocrity was painted as a virtue, le président normal who takes the train like an ordinary workingman. His shopworn program was glitzed up and his election was presented as inevitable. What we have is a hapless government whose weakness leaves an opening for disastrous simplistic fringe movements.
In fact the “majority” that brought Hollande to victory was cobbled together for the occasion, united by nothing but hatred of the Right and the wealthy (themselves excluded) and the certainty of getting a share of the goodies. The Left drapes itself in virtue to obtain power and privileges. The Socialists and their radical allies have been playing this game on every level of local politics for decades. Whether it’s cultural subsidies, propping up businesses, mollifying labor unions or coddling teachers, they siphon public money into their networks of card-carrying friends and rich donators. On a more archaic level French politics functions like a royal court with its intriguing courtesans and an established church selling privileges and indulgences, united to oppress the common people for their own good.
The unemployed, the underpaid, the discouraged masses, endangered middle classes, and embattled professionals are outraged by the blatant cheating of the Minister that was making taxpayers cough up their last euro. Then again, should we be surprised that politicians hide their fortunes from the money-grubbing governments they belong to? We might want to think twice before applauding Offshore Leaks and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that are exposing the wealthy with the aim of destroying tax havens. They may be our last refuge.
Nidra Poller
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