Former Minister Caroline Cayeux, suspected of tax evasion by the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life, backpedals. It reassessed the value of two properties upwards.
[Updated on June 02, 2023 at 4:022 p.m.] Caroline Cayeux, former Minister Delegate for Local Authorities, has reassessed her assets upwards of 3.9 million euros according to Liberation. She therefore estimates that its total value reaches 24.4 million euros. This backpedaling comes a few months after the opening of an investigation by the Paris prosecutor’s office for “incomplete or misleading declaration of assets”.
The former mayor of Beauvais (Oise) only stayed in government for five months between July and November 2022 after the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP) challenged the assessment of her heritage. The disagreement relates to two properties of Caroline Cayeux: her main Parisian residence located on Place de l’Alma (VIII) and a house in Dinard (Ille-et-Vilaine).
The estimate of the HATVP had pushed the minister to resign then the file had been transmitted to the parquet floor of Paris to be the subject of a criminal investigation. Caroline Cayeux’s rebalancing comes as those around her tell Le Figaro that she “completed her January 2023 declaration in a desire to appease and continues to gather evidence of her good faith.”
The current president of the urban community of Beauvais also continues to contest the estimates of the HATVP on the two properties in question. The 213m² Parisian apartment, acquired by Ms. Cayeux in 2013, is valued at 4.9 million euros by the public authority: an amount described as “excessive” by the voice of her lawyer, Édouard de Lamaze, with the Figaro. His board sets it at 2.5 million euros.
Caroline Cayeux’s defense announces that she “has planned to have a new evaluation carried out by independent experts for her Paris apartment.” The same strategy will be operated for the 400m² house in Dinard where the difference between the two estimates is 1.5 million euros.
This adjustment may be late in the criminal investigation which could retain only the original declaration of assets of Caroline Bayeux when the latter entered the government of Elisabeth Borne. The HATVP had however alerted the former city councilor from 2021 to a “serious undervaluation of her main residence and the risks she incurred in the event of a repeat” in a previous statement as mayor of Beauvais.
It is common knowledge that Caroline Cayeux is a multimillionaire, a very heavy wallet due to a family inheritance and the possession of real estate and land. But the exact amount of the septuagenarian’s fortune is not known and it is not impossible that the politician wanted the situation to remain as it was. But the reduction, and therefore the concealment of part of one’s assets, can respond to the offense of “false evaluation of one’s assets (article 26 of the law of October 11, 2013)” punishable “with a penalty of three years of imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros” in addition to a sentence of ineligibility. Tax evasion is also likely to be held against Caroline Cayeux according to the HATVP which relies on article 1741 of the general tax code, which states that “anyone” has “voluntarily concealed part of the sums subject to the ‘tax […] shall be liable, independently of the applicable tax penalties, to imprisonment for five years and a fine of 500,000 euros, the amount of which may be increased to double the proceeds of the offence’. The voluntary nature of the reductions made by Caroline Cayeux in her declaration does not leave too much doubt for the HATVP, which specifies that already in 2021, the septuagenarian had been warned of the undervaluation of her assets in addition to the penalties which were incurred in the event of of reiteration. The investigation must determine for which counts the former minister may have been responsible, but for the time being, Caroline Cayeux remains presumed innocent.
Caroline Cayeux owns several properties but only two have caught the attention of the HATVP and are mentioned in the Courrier Picard. First, a 500m² Haussmannian building at 1 place de l’Alma, in one of the most beautiful areas of the capital with a breathtaking view of the Eiffel Tower and at the foot of the bridge and monument to Lady Di. The flashy building and 99% owned by the former minister is estimated at 12.2 million euros in a first declaration of interests, a value that matches the price per square meter displayed around €20,000 in this district. from Paris. Problem, according to the HATVP, Caroline Cayeux has reduced the value of her main residence, for which it is not specified whether the entire building or only an apartment occupied by the septuagenarian is taken into account, by 2,400,000 €.
Concealment or reduction of assets does not stop there. The former minister also owns a house in Dinard (Ille-et-Vilaine) according to the Picard newspaper. The value of the residence is not known but the HATVP announces that a reduction of €1,500,000 has been made by Caroline Cayeux in her declaration. Together the two reductions correspond to “approximately half of the total value of these two goods”. But the organization does not specify whether the proportion of the reduction was the same for each property.
If Caroline Cayeux’s declaration of assets will never be made public given her resignation, it is well known that the former senator is a multimillionaire. In addition to the two properties at the heart of the suspicions of the HATVP, she owns an apartment near the cathedral of Beauvais worth around €200,000, advances the Courrier Picard, as well as forests in Sologne. To which must be added draft horses.
This heritage, Caroline Cayeux did not constitute it alone. It is an accumulation of legacies, she who is a descendant of the founders of the car manufacturer Panhard, active during the first half of the 20th century, but also of Pierre Fournier, ex-CEO of Fournier laboratories, 4th French pharmaceutical laboratory. independent in the early 2000s.
