Yesterday, Thursday, the French National Financial Public Prosecution requested an 18-month suspended prison sentence for French film star Isabelle Adjani and a fine of 250,000 euros, during her trial session in absentia in Paris on charges of aggravated tax fraud and money laundering.
The 68-year-old actress is suspected of declaring a donation she received as a loan in 2013, taking up a fictitious residence in Portugal in 2016 and 2017, as well as laundering money through the United States in 2014.
Isabelle Adjani’s defense agents asked for the trial to be postponed, explaining their request because she was keen to “explain her position” before the court, but due to her “severe illness” she was unable to come from the United States to attend the session.
However, the court rejected this request, considering that “it is not sufficiently certain that Adjani really intended to attend.”
The Financial Public Prosecutor stressed that “Isabelle Adjani’s name does not matter much in the end. Her fame was neither an additional reason nor an obstacle to prosecution,” and recalled that “she is a citizen subject to duties before she is a public figure.”
The Public Prosecution indicated that Adjani’s main place of residence, her professional activity, and her centers of activity in 2016 and 2017 were in France, not in Portugal, and that she was therefore required to pay income tax in France amounting to 236 thousand euros.
The Public Prosecution also found that the two million euros it received in 2013 from a Senegalese businessman was not a loan, expressing its conviction that it was a “disguised donation.”
The Public Prosecution described as “fictitious” the loan contract signed between them, which did not include interest or guarantees, noting that it allowed the actress to evade transfer taxes worth 1.2 million euros.
The Public Prosecution requested that Adjani be convicted of money laundering because she transferred 119,000 euros from a company in Hong Kong to an “undeclared” American bank account, then transferred it to the mother of one of her relatives in Portugal with the aim of buying a property.
2023-10-20 07:05:37
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