2023-12-14 15:01:05
The actress with five Caesars was sentenced Thursday, December 14 to a sentence higher than that requested by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office.
The Paris criminal court sentenced actress Isabelle Adjani to two years in prison and a fine of 250,000 euros for aggravated tax fraud and money laundering this Thursday, December 14. A more severe sentence than that requested by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), which had requested 18 months of suspended prison time and a fine of 250,000 euros, as well as two years of ineligibility, during the hearing on October 19. This judgment is motivated by the “fictitious domiciliation in Portugal” of the actress and by the “loan of 2 million euros reclassified as a disguised donation”.
“Before being a public figure, she is a citizen subject to duties”, affirmed the PNF prosecutors, for whom Isabelle Adjani “sought, in a fairly systematic manner, to reduce her taxation between 2013 and 2017”. Her lawyers Stéphane Babonneau and Olivier Pardo had denounced the “procedures of intent” and the “beliefs” of the prosecution, pleading the good faith of the 68-year-old actress and requesting her release. The trial took place in the absence of the actress and singer, known in particular for her roles in Murderous Summer (1983), Camille Claudel (1988), Queen Margot (1994) or more recently Masquerade (2022).
Panama Papers
The investigation was opened in 2016 after the name of Isabelle Adjani appeared in the Panama Papers, as the owner of a company in the British Virgin Islands. The investigations did not lead to any prosecution on this aspect but other suspicions were brought to light. Firstly, two million euros transferred in 2013 by Mamadou Diagna NDiaye, an influential businessman, president of the Senegalese National Olympic and Sports Committee and also a member of the International Olympic Committee.
According to the prosecution, it was a “donation disguised” as a loan, which allowed the actress to evade 1.2 million euros in transfer taxes. For the defense, on the other hand, the sum corresponds to a “declared loan” from a “friend”, in a “context of very significant financial distress”. Isabelle Adjani is also accused of having fictitiously domiciled in Portugal in 2016 and 2017, thereby avoiding 236,000 euros in income tax. Living between the two countries at the time, she made a “mistake” by being “badly advised,” her lawyers argued.
The actress was finally suspected of money laundering, for having received 119,000 euros from an offshore company in an “undeclared” American bank account, a sum then transferred to Portugal. Money used “to make a donation to the family of his governess, so that they can acquire property in Portugal”, his advice had argued.
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