For more than ten days budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac has either refused to comment or set up a media smokescreen over key elements of Mediapart's claim that he had a secret Swiss bank account until February 2010. So far the government has backed the minister, who has denied ever having such an account. Here Mediapart's editor François Bonnet details the five crucial points over which the minister still needs to respond, including the recorded conversation in which Cahuzac is clearly heard discussing the UBS bank account in Geneva.
When Mediapart first broke the story about Jérôme Cahuzac and his secret Swiss bank account the budget minister immediately called in the public relations big guns to defend him. The spin doctor Stéphane Fouks and his team at Havas Worlwide/EuroRSCG prepared the minister's strategy. But has the recourse to crisis communications backfired, and is it now starting to work against Jérôme Cahuzac's interests?
