Decisive step in the Joëlle Ceccaldi-Raynaud gold bullion business. According to our information, the mayor (LR) of Puteaux was indicted on Wednesday for aggravated tax fraud laundering.
This indictment comes after almost 48 hours of police custody spent in the investigators’ offices of the Central Office for the Fight against Fiscal and Financial Offenses (OCLIFF) in Nanterre.
At the end of this police custody decided on a rogatory commission as part of a judicial investigation opened on November 29, 2019 for “laundering of tax fraud”, the elected representative was referred to the prosecutor. “It was then placed under judicial control”, we told the Nanterre public prosecutor’s office.
A fortune estimated at 2.6 million euros
Clearly, justice suspects the mayor of Puteaux of having concealed from the tax authorities a small fortune, estimated before the financial crisis of 2008, at nearly 3.5 million euros then reassessed at some 2.6 million euros.
This fortune, allegedly derived from the inheritance of Joëlle Ceccaldi-Raynaud’s Corsican grandmother, was allegedly housed in Switzerland for many years before being deposited in Luxembourg in an account opened in 1996 at the Rothschild bank. The mayor later bequeathed this account to his daughter, Emilie Franchi, before the gold was converted into cash in 2004.
A first preliminary investigation, already entrusted to OCLIFF, had been opened against X for laundering tax fraud in May 2016. Expanded in January 2017, this investigation had given rise to searches of the respective homes of the mother and daughter. Since then, nothing. Until the placement in police custody, this Monday, of the mayor of Puteaux.
“I will be able to defend my innocence”
Faced with the police, Joëlle Ceccaldi-Raynaud denied having concealed part of her fortune from the tax services. “She disputes all the facts with which she is accused and reserves her explanations for the examining magistrate,” indicates, laconically, her lawyer, Me Antoine Maisonneuve.
“I can now have access to the file, which I have been waiting for a long time since the facts go back more than twenty years”, explains Joëlle Ceccaldi-Raynaud this Wednesday afternoon. “I will be able to defend my innocence, exactly as in the district heating affair of La Défense for which I obtained a dismissal. I have complete confidence in justice, ”she insists.
