The verdict is in. Patrick and Isabelle Balkany were sentenced respectively to four and a half and three and a half years in prison, a fine of 100,000 euros and 10 years of ineligibility, for laundering tax fraud on Monday. At the end of a third trial devoted solely to the length of the sentences, the court also ordered a total confusion of these sanctions with those of three years of imprisonment pronounced in the tax evasion aspect of the Balkany case. The Paris Court of Appeal has once again ruled in the resounding case which earned the former city councilors of Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine) their political banishment and almost a year of detention for Patrick Balkany.
The justice examined this case in two stages. In a first part, that of tax evasion, the former mayor LR and his ex-first deputy, 74 and 75 years old today, have been definitively sentenced since March 2020 to three years in prison and ten years of ineligibility . The couple was serving this first sentence under an electronic bracelet until this measure was canceled in February 2022 due to numerous shortcomings.
New trial on the amount of the penalties
The former baron of Hauts-de-Seine, who had spent five months in prison in 2019-2020, was reincarcerated for six months. In May 2020, the former city councilors were sentenced to five and four years in prison, a fine of 100,000 euros each and, again, a decade of ineligibility, for aggravated laundering of tax fraud and false declaration to the High Authority for Transparency in Public Life (HATVP).
They were found guilty of having concealed between 2007 and 2014 some 13 million euros in tax assets, including two sumptuous villas in the Caribbean and Morocco. Patrick Balkany was also sentenced for illegal taking of interests, the justice having considered that he had benefited from “personal advantages” in kind within the framework of a large real estate contract of the city of Levallois-Perret. Against this second conviction, the Balkanys appealed to the Court of Cassation which, if it definitively confirmed their guilt, ordered a new trial solely on the amount of the penalties.
The public prosecutor’s office had requested the confirmation of the sentences handed down in May 2020 (five and four years in prison), but it did not oppose a confusion of sentences with those of the tax evasion component (three years each), which would reduce total. For its part, the defense had requested that the penalties be reduced to three years in prison with the hope of completely merging the sentences in the two parts.