A former head of the Occitanie tax authorities and his wife appear on Friday for corruption and illegal taking of interest before the Toulouse Criminal Court.

They are suspected of having warned restaurant friends of an impending tax audit.

This massive fraud would concern several restaurants in downtown Toulouse.

A former tax official and his wife appear on Friday for corruption and illegal taking of interest.

While still in office, they were said to have deliberately warned friends that their business was going to be subject to a tax audit.

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SMS exchanges and a friendly tone

When, at the end of 2018, tax inspectors investigate a massive fraud on several restaurants in downtown Toulouse, they are surprised to come across emails and text messages between a restaurateur and their own boss Marc Menvielle, then director. deputy of the fiscal pole.

The tone is friendly, the interlocutors are talking to each other.

The inspectors then suspect their superior and his wife, also a senior tax official, of having warned the head of an establishment where they had their habits of the imminent control.

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They would have favored a friend who is an accountant

For the couple's lawyer, Maître Laurent Boguet, there is nothing to confirm this.

"They never provided the slightest information on the timing of the tax procedure which was carried out against this restaurateur. It will be up to the courts to establish whether an administrator of public finances, who is suffering, like everyone else , the need to go to eat every noon, sometimes in the company of his wife, with the possibility or not of maintaining relations of esteem, and not friendly relations, with the restaurateur in question ", has t -it developed at the microphone of Europe 1.

The investigation also reveals that they would have given an advantage to a friend who was a chartered accountant during a tax audit.

The defense denounces a prosecution and will ask at the start of the hearing Friday the opening of a judicial investigation.