A preliminary investigation into alleged 'laundering of the proceeds of tax fraud' in the case of France's Budget Minister Jérôme Cahuzac has found that a tape recording in which he discusses his undisclosed bank account in Geneva is genuine. Both expert analysis and the evidence of witnesses prove the authenticity of the recording, which was made accidentally and without Cahuzac's knowledge.
In the recording, made in late 2000, the man who is now in charge of balancing France's books and fighting tax evasion, speaks of his embarrassment at having the account at UBS in Geneva. “It pisses me off to have an account open there. UBS is not necessarily the most hidden of banks,” he is heard saying on the tape, whose existence was revealed by Mediapart last December. Cahuzac, 60, closed the account in 2010, shortly before he was appointed as president of the finance commission of the National Assembly. According to sources informed of the operation, funds held in the account were then transferred to Singapore.
The revelation that the tape has been officially demonstrated to be genuine is bound to make Cahuzac's position in the French government more vulnerable.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Following Mediapart's exclusive revelations last year, the minister has always publicly denied having the UBS account but initially refused to comment on the tape's validity. And emails seen by Mediapart show that in December 2012 Cahuzac did not deny its authenticity in correspondence with a friend. Later, however, he suggested it was not his voice on the tape. Up to this point the budget minister has taken no legal action against Mediapart in relation to the status of the tape.
The police and senior financial investigators believe they have uncovered enough elements to justify an independent examining magistrate investigating the Cahuzac affair. Indeed, examining magistrate Guillaume Daïeff, who is carrying out a separate investigation into alleged complicity in tax evasion by UBS, has already written to the prosecution authorities in Paris underlining that the facts relating to Cahuzac are “connected” to his case and that he would “not be opposed” to the terms of his reference being added to so that he could investigate the budget minister's case.
That key decision lies in the hands of Paris's public prosecutor François Molins.
On February 19th Cahuzac hinted to journalists that he was expecting some kind of bad event to happen – without giving any clue as to in which domain – when he announced at an informal breakfast meeting that he was expecting to “take a crash tackle” (the word is 'caramel' in French as in the sweet, here used ironically). When journalists asked what he meant by this the minister replied: “In rugby a 'caramel' is a blow you don't get up from.”
The work to authenticate the tape was carried out by technicians from the technical squad the Police scientifique et technique (PTS) based at Ecully, in the Rhône, in southern France. Meanwhile officers from the national financial and tax investigation unit the Division nationale d’investigations financières et fiscales (Dniff), based at Nanterre on the western outskirts of Paris, who are leading the initial investigation, have spoken to witnesses who confirm both that it is Cahuzac's voice and that the call came from his phone.
Investigators unhappy at delaying tactics
The crucial call in late 2000 was made, accidentally, to Michel Gonelle, a barrister and former conservative UMP party mayor of Villeneuve-sur-Lot, in south-west France, whom Cahuzac would beat the following year (2001) to become mayor of the town himself.
Officers from Dniff have now spoken to two key witnesses who had access to the recording while it was still on Gonelle's mobile phone. One is a bailiff, Maurice Chassava. He confirms that Jérôme Cahuzac had first of all left one intentional message on Gonelle's phone about an impending visit by the then interior minister Daniel Vaillant to inaugurate a local police station - Gonelle was still mayor of Villeneuve-sur-Lot at the time. But it was only in the second, unintentional message, that Cahuzac inadvertently made his revelations about his Swiss bank account to Gonelle's phone.
The bailiff Chassava explains that, before taking a copy of the recording, he heard both messages on Michel Gonelle's mobile, confirming in each case that it did involve a call coming from Cahuzac's number. The witness, who is today retired, is certain that the voice is Cahuzac, whom he knew very well.
A second witness was interviewed by Dniff officers at Bordeaux on Friday March 15th. Florent Pédebas, a former gendarme who went to work in the private sector, and who is said to be close to Michel Gonelle, also confirmed the bailiff's version of events. Like the bailiff, Pédebas is one of the few people to have heard both messages left by Jérôme Cahuzac on Gonelle's phone. He also says they both came from the same number and when giving his witness statement “confidently” confirmed that it was indeed the voice of Jérôme Cahuzac, whom he also knew.
Investigators have also interviewed a witness about the existence of the Swiss bank account itself. Private detective Alain Letellier who did some work for Patricia Cahuzac, the minister’s wife currently in the middle of a divorce, told investigators that his client had told him categorically about the existence of an account in Switzerland held by Jérôme Cahuzac. Mediapart understands that when asked about this by investigators an embarrassed Patricia Cahuzac said she had no recollection of the conversation.
Since Mediapart first broke the revelations about Cahuzac's Swiss bank account more than three months ago, he has done all in his power to divert attention from the existence of the embarrassing tape recording. At the end of January the French tax authorities – for whom Cahuzet is the minister in charge – asked their Swiss counterparts for assistance, wanting them to confirm whether or not Jérôme Cahuzac had held a Swiss bank account between 2006 and 2012.
According to a source from the French Finance Ministry quoted by the newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, the response came within a week, a speed that astonished experts familiar with the workings of the Swiss tax authorities. And it was favourable to Cahuzac. However, according to a judicial source who spoke first to news agency Reuters, then weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, the “Swiss information is open to interpretation”.
In fact, no journalist has seen this Swiss response. And it seem that in any case it is of no use to the current investigation. An informed source on judicial investigations told Mediapart recently: “It's worth nothing, it proves nothing.”
However, the move by the French finance ministry to contact its Swiss counterparts in this way has not gone down well. It has been seen as a clumsy attempt to hold up an ongoing judicial investigation. That has apparently not pleased the magistrates and police officers in charge of that investigation.
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English version by Michael Streeter