- Tweeter
republish
The Balkany River Trial ended on Wednesday, June 19th after five weeks of hearings. The mayor of Levallois-Perret, near Paris, and his wife, are accused of "large-scale laundering" and corruption. They reportedly hid 13 million euros in assets between 2007 and 2014. Patrick Balkany's attorney, Me Dupont-Moretti, spoke for almost an hour at the end of the trial, arguing that his client do not go to jail. The judgment will be rendered on October 18th.
For five weeks, between blood drives and cheeky banter, the mayor of Levallois-Perret Patrick Balkany will have tried everything to appear only as a " passive fraudster " with corruption in " horror ", caught up with his " mania to want always to please .
The tone is different, at the bar, where he comes to say Wednesday his last words. " I only aspire to one thing, it is to be able to stay with my wife because she needs me to be near her, " he says, regretting having dragged his son Alexander there.
Patrick Balkany, 70, faced the five weeks of trial without his wife and first assistant Isabelle, 71, recovering from a suicide attempt in early May.
The National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) required seven years in prison , ten years of ineligibility and the confiscation of all his property. Against his wife, four years suspended and 500,000 euros fine.
The defense did not fail to rebel against the temptation of judicial exemplarity against a man already " shredded " by the press and against which the required penalty is " heavier than for some blood crimes ".
The Balkany have recognized tax fraud and even some of the money laundering. Isabelle Balkany had, during the investigation, admitted to having acquired thanks to a family inheritance Villa Antillaise in 1997, via a company constituted in Liechtenstein by a Swiss fiduciary.
On the other hand, the couple still denied holding the riad of the palm grove, acquired in January 2010 by a Moroccan SCI, itself owned by a Panamanian screen company. The prosecution claims that Patrick Balkany was offered this villa by Saudi billionaire Mohamed al-Jaber in exchange for payment deadlines for the Levallois Towers, a juicy real estate project that ultimately failed.
The prosecutor's office has demanded the firm jail against the Saudi billionaire, for " knowingly bribed an elected official of the Republic ", the lawyer Arnaud Claude, presented as " the pilot of the operation " Moroccan, and against Jean-Pierre Aubry, then general manager of the development company of Levallois, " nominee until the sacrifice " for his " master " Patrick Balkany.
(With Afp)