BALKANY. Patrick Balkany will know this Monday, February 7, 2022 if he is going back to prison, at the end of his meeting with the prosecutor of Evreux.
The decision must be made official this Monday, February 7, 2022. Patrick Balkany seems to have made up his own mind: a return to prison seems inevitable for the former mayor of Levallois-Perret. The former elected official from Hauts-de-Seine went to his meeting with the prosecutor of Evreux (Eure) this Monday morning with a bag filled with a few things, as reported by BFM TV. If he initially had to go to the office of the magistrate located in the prefecture, it was finally Dominique Puechmaille who moved not far from the residence of the one who was sentenced to three years in prison for tax evasion. It is between the walls of the gendarmerie of Vexin-sur-Epte that the prosecutor exposes to Patrick Balkany the continuation that will know his condemnation, after the revocation of his placement under electronic bracelet. What awaits his wife Isabelle Balkany will also be discussed, while the former first assistant of Levallois is hospitalized in Rouen after having swallowed a box of drugs. She also tested positive for Covid.
Placement behind bars seems inevitable for the couple. After having pronounced the revocation of the placement under an electronic bracelet, Thursday February 3, 2022, the prosecutor of Evreux had justified: “at some point, it is very simple, when we play with fire, we burn ourselves.” A hundred incidents related to non-compliance with the constraints of wearing the electronic bracelet (hours of authorized exits, etc.) have been identified, but not only. The attitude of the former mayor of Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine) is also questioned. A former elected official who is accused of “his vehement remarks (…) often outrageous or even outrageous both with regard to the staff of the prison administration and the judge responsible for the application of sentences”. To justify her decision, the prosecutor referred to a “total lack of effort”, in particular to “clear their tax debt”, but also to comply with the restrictions to which they had to submit. Only the state of health of the septuagenarians could prevent them from going into the shade.
After months of relative freedom, an electronic bracelet attached to their ankle reporting live their slightest movement, it is therefore direction prison for Patrick and Isabelle Balkany. By February 8, the deadline for appealing in cassation, their imprisonment should be pronounced. Even if the spouses would go to cassation, the decision would not be suspensive, thus not preventing their placement behind bars. But where should they serve their three-year sentence for tax evasion? According to information from BFM TV, Patrick Balkany should be imprisoned in the prison of Health, in Paris. As for Isabelle Balkany, she should take the direction of Fresnes or Fleury-Merogis, two prison centers in Île-de-France which have a district for women.
For Patrick Balkany, it would be a return behind bars in the same prison, he who was imprisoned in Health from September 2019 to February 2020, following his conviction at first instance which included a warrant of committal. But, because of his very weakened state of health, he was released after five months, therefore, and never returned. Isabelle Balkany, she has never been the subject of a warrant of deposit. It would therefore be the first time that the ex-elected Hauts-de-Seine would find herself in prison. But Isabelle Balkany would have made a suicide attempt after the announcement of the decision of the Rouen Court of Appeal. She was quickly taken care of by the emergency services. “She had said:” I will not go to prison, I will delete myself”, worried her husband on BFM TV.
For Isabelle Balkany’s lawyers, Pierre-Olivier Sur and Clara Gérard-Rodriguez, this is an illogical decision: “75 years old, in an extremely degraded physical and psychological state, Isabelle Balkany has already lost everything. And the Balkany name has become the catalyst for public opprobrium, even hatred”, they lament, castigating a decision which is “a new illustration of symbolic justice”.
The Balkany under electronic bracelet for several years
For several years, Patrick and Isabelle Balkany have been placed under an electronic bracelet. The former mayor of Levallois and his ex-first deputy had been sentenced, in September 2019, for tax evasion, to three years in prison and ten years of ineligibility. A sentence accompanied by a warrant of deposit for the one who was then still first aedile. Incarcerated in the prison of Health, in Paris, Patrick Balkany was released five months later because of his state of health. The chosen one appeared very weakened and emaciated when he left. He was then placed under an electronic bracelet, just like his wife who had been since the decision of the sentence enforcement judge some time after the final conviction. Isabelle Balkany had not been the subject of a warrant of committal, the medical aspect taking precedence in view of her background and her various suicide attempts.
Since then, the couple has resided in the pretty residence of the Giverny mill (Eure). But, as revealed Mediapart, the justice requested the revocation of the placement under electronic bracelet of the spouses on December 17, due to a hundred incidents. “Non-compliance with release times, absence from appointments with the SPIP (prison information and probation service), non-payment of the installments that they were ordered to reimburse to the tax authorities”, detailed the media. But the arrest warrant was not issued and no incarceration was pronounced. Because on December 23, an appeal of the revocation was made. Consequence: they had not gone to prison, but were no longer under electronic bracelet, without being free. A legal vacuum which had allowed them to spend Christmas in Levallois, to stroll on the market of the city or to attend a basketball match of the club of Boulogne-Levallois.
The Balkany sentenced for fraud and laundering of tax evasion
Since 2013, Patrick and Isabelle Balkany have been the subject of an extensive judicial investigation. After seven years of work by investigators, one of the barons of the right, loyal to Nicolas Sarkozy, had been sentenced to three years in prison and 10 years of ineligibility. He then went to prison, to Health in Paris, before coming out five months later. His wife, she is not the subject of a warrant of deposit. The two, found guilty of having concealed part of their income from the tax authorities, avoiding paying 3 million euros in taxes and nearly 1.5 million euros in ISF, had been placed under an electronic bracelet.
The spouses are also the subject of legal proceedings for laundering tax fraud. They allegedly concealed approximately 13 million euros in assets from the tax authorities, over a period from 2007 to 2014, in particular not declaring a villa in Saint-Martin and a riad in Marrakech, Morocco, which they held via an arrangement of offshore companies. On June 30, 2021, the Court of Cassation had found their guilt, but their sentences had not been pronounced in this case and still have not been.