Deputy mayor of Paris in charge of Europe, Hermano Sanches Ruivo was heard by the police on suspicion of laundering tax fraud, the City of Paris said Thursday. She affirms, in a press release, to have “taken knowledge by way of press of the hearing by the police force of Hermano Sanches Ruivo” and consequently to seize the commission of ethics about her deputy. According to Le Parisien, Hermano Sanches Ruivo was reportedly taken into police custody in October to be heard on a tax fraud laundering offense, “following an anonymous denunciation”. The person concerned denied to the newspaper that he had been in police custody.
Contacted by AFP, the entourage of the elected (PS group and related) was not immediately reachable. Even if the “alleged facts” seem “unrelated to the exercise of his elected mandate”, the City has “decided to immediately seize the City’s Ethics Commission in order to carry out the necessary verifications and draw all the consequences ”. If he were to be indicted, Hermano Sanches Ruivo “will leave his post without delay,” said the town hall.
Already an ethical problem in the past
Wednesday, after a previous article by Marianne referring to “an elected representative of the majority” suspected of illegal taking of interests, the City had told AFP that it was not aware of such a case that could justify informing the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office via article 40.
In November, a former elected official, Jean-Louis Missika, urban planning assistant during Anne Hidalgo’s first term, had to resign from a mission committee of the Novaxia real estate group because of a “major ethical problem, a conflict of interest which could, if necessary, become a criminal problem, ”commission chairman Yves Charpenel told AFP. For the former first Advocate General to the Court of Cassation, this was a “clear conflict of interest” since Jean-Louis Missika “had himself participated in deliberations on these subjects and in particular in with regard to the company Novaxia ”.