French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici Tuesday hit back over a highly-critical Newsweek article that has triggered a storm over alleged French bashing reports GlobalPost.
The article entitled "The Fall of France" claims the Socialist government of President Francois Hollande is driving out wealth and entrepreneurs by imposing high taxes while freely spending on extravagant social schemes.
The writer, Janine di Giovanni, came to live in Paris after marrying a Frenchman. She says that French government policies kill any business initiative.
"As they say, the problem with the French is they have no word for entrepreneur. Where is the Richard Branson of France? Where is the Bill Gates?" she wrote in an article that has sparked a wave of indignant responses on social media.
Di Giovanni cited a friend, who was leaving France to escape a 70 percent tax, as pointing to Moscovici who was eating at a posh Japanese restaurant at the same time as them, and saying he was man who "ruined my life."
"I'm going to kill him," she quotes the lawyer as saying, adding that he was "working like a dog for nothing - to hand out money to the profligate state."
Moscovici, speaking at a news conference with visiting US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, said the article was riddled with "innumerable errors."
Read more of this AFP report published by GlobalPost.