The late Raymond Barre was one of the best-known prime ministers of France's Fifth Republic and was publicly lauded by a president as one of the country's best economists. He was also forever associated with austerity and budget cuts during the difficult economic years of the late 1970s and spoke of the need of French people to pay their taxes. Now his two sons, Olivier and Nicolas Barre, have been placed under formal investigation over the “laundering of the proceeds of tax fraud” as part of a probe by French prosecutors into a stash of money that was hidden in a Swiss bank account by their father. Antton Rouget reports.
The sons of one of the best-known prime ministers of France's Fifth Republic, Raymond Barre, have been placed under formal investigation over alleged “laundering the proceeds of tax fraud” as part of a probe launched after the discovery of a secret hoard of money left by their father in Switzerland.
