INTERVIEW
The vice-president of the anti-corruption organization Anticor, Eric Alt, spoke at the microphone of Europe 1 on the condemnation of the mayor of Levallois-Perret, Patrick Balkany. The latter was sentenced to 4 years in prison with immediate incarceration for tax fraud on Friday. Eric Alt comments on this conviction.
"It's a paradoxical victory for financial justice, it's been condemned, but it's a 30-year-old case, and I would add that tax evasion is not insignificant. Tax evasion impoverishes us all Tax evasion and evasion costs us 100 billion euros a year The fact that a methodical tax fraud, inscribed in the long term, as the judgment says in its motivation, gives rise to an important sentence seems normal to me, "he began on Europe 1.
"The party is over"
Eric Dupond-Moretti, Mr. Balkany's lawyer, said, after the pronunciation of the judgment: "Today, we paid for Balkany". He also reported that he would appeal. For Eric Alt, "Mr Balkany was an emblematic figure of financial crime and tax fraud". He continues: "If Mr Balkany was not sanctioned by a significant penalty, one would think that never tax fraud, never the tax offenders would be sanctioned.The party is over for politicians who defended a certain culture of the Impunity: The party is over for tax evaders, but it is a symbolic decision that is important in recent judicial history. "
Eric Dupond-Moretti, always, estimated Friday that the mandate of deposit granted to Patrick Balkany was a "useless humiliation". Eric Alt, he finds the immediate incarceration legitimate. He commented: "The judgment motivates the warrant of committal, it says that the interests of Mr. Balkany, given the importance of the sentence, could have diverge from the national soil.In other words, we know that Mr. Balkany had a riad in Marrakech, we know that he had many contacts in Africa, he could have gone abroad like Jacques Médecin and like others ".
He concludes: "He pays for a certain constancy in the delinquency.At the end of 30 years, the justice imposes an important sentence on him.I think that symbolically it was indispensable.The just and proportionate punishment was useful because it was necessary to mark that fiscal crime is something important, it's not a national sport. "