The French actress was sentenced to 2 years in prison and a fine of 250,000 euros for tax evasion. Update on the case.
Isabelle Adjani was sentenced by the Paris Criminal Court to two years in prison and a fine of 250,000 euros this Thursday, December 14, 2023. The sanction fell two months after her trial for tax fraud, to which she did not appear, last October. The national financial prosecutor’s office then requested an 18-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 250,000 euros, as well as two years of ineligibility.
The case began in 2016, when an investigation following the Panama Papers highlighted suspicions targeting the 68-year-old actress. He was then accused of having received 2 million euros from an influential Senegalese businessman, Mamadou Diagna NDiaye, three years earlier.
Isabelle Adjani is then suspected of having passed off what would be a donation as a loan, thus avoiding the payment of 1.2 million euros in transfer taxes. Last October, the actress’ lawyers assured AFP that it was indeed “a loan from a close friend.”
A home in Portugal denounced
The tax residence of Isabelle Adjani was also in the sights of justice: the actress was accused of having fictitiously domiciled in Portugal, then evading 236,000 euros in income taxes in 2016 and 2017.
Her lawyers assured two months ago that the actress “today has no tax debt, whether in France or Portugal and has paid everything she owes”. According to them, the actress had made “an error” due to the fact that she had been “badly advised”.
Money laundering charges
Isabelle Adjani was also on trial for money laundering between the United States and Portugal, for a case dating back to 2014. The actress from Queen Margot is then suspected of having used an American bank account “not declared to the tax administration” 119,000 euros “coming from an offshore company with unknown beneficial owner and intended for an investment in Portugal”, indicated last July a judicial source at Agence France Presse.
His lawyers once again denied these accusations, assuring that it was “a gift to the family of his housekeeper, so that she could acquire property in Portugal”.