The sanction fell. This Thursday, Isabelle Adjani was sentenced to two years in prison and a fine of 250,000 euros for tax fraud.
The Paris criminal court ruled on the fate of the five-César actress, two months after a trial which took place in her absence.
At the hearing on October 19, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) requested eighteen months of suspended prison time and a fine of 250,000 euros, as well as two years of ineligibility.
“A citizen subject to duties”
“Before being a public figure, she is a citizen subject to duties”, affirmed the financial prosecutors, for whom Isabelle Adjani “sought, in a fairly systematic manner, to reduce her taxation between 2013 and 2017”.
Her lawyers, Stéphane Babonneau and Olivier Pardo, denounced the “trials of intent” and the “beliefs” of the prosecution, pleading the good faith of the 68-year-old actress-star and requesting her release.
The actress absent from her trial
The trial took place without the actress and singer, known in particular for her roles in “L’été humaine” (1983), “Camille Claudel” (1988), “La Reine Margot” (1994) or more recently “Masquerade” (2022).
While she was in the United States, her defense requested the postponement of the hearing, citing in particular an “acute pathology”, but the court rejected this request, saying it doubted her “real intention” to come to bar.
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.
A “disguised donation”
Firstly, 2 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 corresponds to a “declared loan” from a “friend”, in a “context of very significant financial distress”.
A mistake “
Isabelle Adjani is 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 made a “mistake” by being “badly advised”, her lawyers argued.
The actress is 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”, his advice argued.