The elected 32-year-old says he knows nothing about this case. L La France insoumise (LFI) Carlos Martens Bilongo is however the subject of an investigation for suspicions of “laundering of tax evasion” and “abuse of corporate assets”, announced the Pontoise prosecutor’s office this Thursday, May 18. According to information from AFP, the procedure was opened in mid-April following a report from Tracfin, Bercy’s financial intelligence unit. Another track that triggered the investigation: failure to declare to the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP).
200,000 undeclared euros and a hidden account
According to the BFMTV channel, which revealed the case, the deputy is suspected of having concealed just under 200,000 euros from the authorities over the period 2018-2022. Investigators are sifting through several suspicious transactions. The MP is said to have received transfers to his bank accounts and collected several tens of thousands of euros in cash, even though he declared to the HATVP that he did not receive any remuneration from his companies. Tracfin also reported to the courts an undeclared account abroad of which the deputy would be the holder, according to BFMTV.
In a press release sent to AFP by his lawyer, Carlos Martens Bilongo indicates that he discovered this investigation through the press, and maintains that he does not have an account abroad. “To my knowledge, all of the sums paid into my company accounts have been declared in good and due form”, he also said, specifying that he had asked his accountant to verify that no “declarative error n could have been committed”. “I will be perfectly transparent on all of these elements both with the institutions and with public opinion,” he promised.
Abuse of social housing
According to the continuous news channel, the deputy would also have “benefited until December 2022, six months after his election, from social housing which he sublet to one of his sisters in Villiers-le -Bel, in the Val-d’Oise, while at the same time he owned two other apartments”. Social housing that would appear in the Tracfin report.
Still in a press release, MP Bilongo specifies that he benefited from social housing in accordance with his conditions of resources”, in 2013 “after the death of his mother, while he was an apprentice”, in which he resided until the end of his life. end of work in his new apartment before the start of his mandate, and that his sister ended up completely freeing at the end of 2022. “Nothing was ever concealed”, underlined Carlos Martens Bilongo with AFP, presenting exchanges with its lessor in 2019.
The former high school teacher was elected in June 2022 under the Nupes label, ending the 14-year mandate of local baron François Pupponi, a socialist figure from Val-d’Oise who had joined the presidential party. He was also involved in the voluntary sector of Villiers-le-Bel, a popular town in Val-d’Oise where he grew up. The announcement of the opening of the investigation comes on the day of the publication of his first book, Black French at Philippe Rey editions, testimony of a “kid from Villiers-le-Bel” on “his story made up of struggles, survival strategies, intelligence on the ground”.