French film star Isabelle Adjani will be tried on Thursday in Paris on charges of tax fraud and money laundering, suspected of concealing a loan donation and falsely residing in Portugal, which she strongly opposes.
His defense will ask to postpone the trial, because the artist “was unable to board the plane” from the United States due to “an acute illness confirmed by a doctor from New York,” his lawyers told AFP.
The 68-year-old actress has been the target of an investigation since 2016 following the Panama Papers.
In the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) revelations, she was cited as the owner of a business in the British Virgin Islands.
Investigations did not reveal any crime linked to this foreign company, but they revealed other suspicions that led to the National Financial Public Prosecution being summoned to court.
First, two million euros were transferred by Mamadou Diagna Ndiaye, an influential Senegalese businessman, president of the Senegalese National Olympic and Sports Committee and member of the International Olympic Committee.
The actress is suspected of passing off what was a donation as a loan, which would have allowed her to evade €1.2 million in transfer taxes.
Her lawyers stressed that “all elements of the file and investigation make it possible to prove, without ambiguity or possible doubt, that our client benefited in 2013 from a loan from a close friend.”
“This loan was the subject of a contract duly registered with the French Tax Administration when it was signed in 2013, as required by law. The loan is now in an advanced stage of repayment,” they added.
Isabelle Adjani was also accused of fictitious residency in Portugal, thus evading income tax amounting to 236 thousand euros.
“If there was a discrepancy in the assessment with the tax authority about her place of tax residence in 2016 and 2017,” the actress “today has no tax debt, whether in France or in Portugal and has paid all her dues,” according to what Reuters reported. Her defense.
The leading actress of the 80s and 90s, Isabelle Adjani, has become a rarity on the big screen, but she creates an event with each of her performances in cinema, theater or television.
