The personal assets of French ministers – including houses, cars, furniture, jewellery and artworks – are to be made public for the first time on Monday afternoon as part of François Hollande's bid to shake off a tax fraud scandal, reports The Telegraph.
In a country whose attitude to wealth is deeply ambivalent, the move has sparked a political row over whether it is a bold move towards greater transparency and accountability or a populist, counterproductive act of voyeurism.
The government hopes the measure will help turn the page on a hugely damaging scandal over tax fraud charges meted against former-budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac, the man tasked with fighting tax evasion, after he admitted having a secret Swiss bank account.
With France engrossed in a guessing game over which of the 37 ministers on the list will end up top of the personal wealth table, some have already jumped the gun.
Disclosing family assets of 5.4 million euros this morning, the minister for the elderly, Michele Delaunay, conceded that her considerable wealth would be “difficult to understand for the majority of the French, who are facing hard times” – even if it was all above board.
While she said the disclosure was an “ordeal”, she said she supported the idea.
"It is probably a necessary step toward a real battle against tax evasion and fraud. If we had not taken it, in the context of Cahuzac, it may have been seen as a desire to protect certain people,” she told Sud Ouest newspaper.
Among cabinet members who have already came forward is health and social affairs minister Marisol Touraine, who said her declaration will show about 1.4 million euros in assets, based primarily on several properties in Paris.
Culture minister Aurélie Filippetti sparked mirth when she added a David Beckham T-shirt to her list alongside a 70-square-metre (750-square-foot) flat in Paris.
Industrial renewal minister Arnaud Montebourg declared owning a designer lounge chair worth about 4,000 euros while housing minister Cecile Duflot, of the Greens, declared a 168,000-euro home and two old cars, including 14-year-old Renault Twingo.
Most hotly awaited is the personal wealth of Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister – an avid art collector whose father was a successful antiques dealer.
The exercise risks being all the more uncomfortable for wealthy left-wing ministers as Mr Hollande has previously famously declared: "I don't like the rich."
The move has sparked criticism across the political spectrum, with the head of the main opposition right-wing UMP, Jean-François Copé, saying today that the measure would only "create tensions" in French society.
Read more of this report from The Telegraph.
See also this special dossier of Mediapart's investigations which first exposed budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac's secret foreign bank accounts:
The Cahuzac affair: an A-Z of Mediapart's exclusive investigations and analysis