Former French minister attempted €15mn transfer to Swiss bank, report says

A new report has revealed that France’s former Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac tried to deposit 15 million euros into a Swiss bank while in office four years ago.

On Sunday, Radio Television Suisse claimed it holds information from “banking sources” that the former budget minister attempted to transfer the money into a Geneva bank in 2009. However, the bank reportedly refused to accept the deposit as it feared “future complications” since Cahuzac was a political figure.

Cahuzac, who was charged on April 3 with laundering the proceeds of tax fraud for a Swiss bank account with about 600,000 euros ($770,000), denied the new allegations through his lawyer Jean Veil.

The scandal has triggered one of the worst political crises for France in decades adding huge pressure for President Francois Hollande, who was already struggling with low confidence ratings.

The French newspaper Liberation wrote that the crisis was “so fundamental” that “contract of trust between people and government has now been broken.”

According to a poll published on Sunday, almost one third of French electors called for the National Assembly to be dissolved and wanted new elections to be held, which would be less than a year after the last voting.

Cahuzac resigned on March 19 as the minister in charge of cracking down on tax evasion after online newspaper, Mediapart, revealed that he was holding money for around 20 years in a secret Swiss bank account.

During several months prior to his resignation, the minister strongly denied the allegations, calling them “slanderous” and told the French parliament that, “I don’t have, I never have had, accounts abroad.”

Cahuzac was elected to the National Assembly in 1997. He was in charge of its commission on public finances and was appointed by Hollande as budget minister when forming his first government.