After years of investigation and a hearing in October, the Paris criminal court sentenced the actress to 2 years in prison and a fine of 250,000 euros.
The Paris criminal court on Thursday sentenced actress Isabelle Adjani to a 2-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 250,000 euros, two months after a trial for tax fraud which took place in her absence. At the hearing on October 19, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) requested an 18-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 250,000 euros, as well as two years of ineligibility.
Quoted in the Panama Papers
The investigation was opened in 2016 after the name of Isabelle Adjani appeared in the Panama Papers, as the owner of a company in the British Virgin Islands. The investigations did not lead to any prosecution on this aspect but other suspicions were brought to light.
Firstly, two million euros transferred in 2013 by Mamadou Diagna NDiaye, an influential businessman, president of the Senegalese National Olympic and Sports Committee and also a member of the International Olympic Committee.
According to the prosecution, it was a “disguised donation” as a loan, which allowed the actress to evade 1.2 million euros in transfer taxes. For the defense, on the other hand, the sum corresponded to a “declared loan” from a “friend”, in a “context of very significant financial distress”.
“Poorly advised”, according to his lawyers
Isabelle Adjani was also accused of having fictitiously domiciled in Portugal in 2016 and 2017, thereby evading 236,000 euros of income tax. Living between the two countries at the time, she had made a “mistake” by being “badly advised”, her lawyers argued.
The actress was finally suspected of money laundering, for having received 119,000 euros from an offshore company into an “undeclared” American bank account, a sum then transferred to Portugal. Money used “to make a donation to the family of his housekeeper, so that they can acquire property in Portugal”, argued his advice.