The National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) requested on Thursday in Paris an 18-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 250,000 euros against French star Isabelle Adjani, who was standing trial in her absence on charges of serious tax fraud and money laundering.
The 68-year-old actress, who protests her innocence, is suspected of concealing a loan donation in 2013, of having a fictitious residence in Portugal in 2016 and 2017, and of having transferred an amount via the USA in 2014.
At the beginning of the afternoon, her defense requested that the trial be postponed on the grounds that she wanted to “explain herself” in court but was unable to board the plane from the USA due to “an acute pathology”. .
The court rejected this request on the grounds that “it was not sufficiently established that Ms. Adjani actually intended to be present.”
“In the end, the name Isabelle Adjani doesn’t play a big role. “His fame was neither an additional reason nor an obstacle to prosecution,” explained the financial prosecutor. “Before she is a public figure, she is a citizen subject to duties.”
For the prosecution, her main residence, her professional activity and her main activities were in France and not in Portugal in 2016 and 2017 and she would have had to pay 236,000 euros in income tax in France.
Likewise, according to PNF, the transfer of two million euros in 2013 from a Senegalese businessman was not a loan but a “hidden donation”.
The loan agreement signed between them, which did not contain interest or guarantees, was “fictitious” for the prosecutor, who believes that it allowed the actress to evade 1.2 million euros in transfer taxes.
Finally, the PNF requested that she be found guilty of money laundering for transferring the amount of 119,000 euros from a company in Hong Kong to an “undeclared” American bank account and then transferring it to the mother of a relative in Portugal for the purchase of real estate .
The defense must plead for acquittal in the evening.