Actress Isabelle Adjani, retried for aggravated tax fraud and money laundering in Paris, was sentenced on Wednesday to ten months’ suspended imprisonment and a fine of 10,000 euros, a sentence largely reduced compared to her first instance conviction in 2023.
“This is a positive first step. For me, only respect for the law counts, I will find it before the Court of Cassation,” said Isabelle Adjani, who said she was “relieved” to AFP by telephone.
The Paris Court of Appeal confirmed her guilt, but revised her sentence downward: in December 2023, the Paris criminal court sentenced her to two years’ suspended imprisonment and a fine of 250,000 euros.
One of his four lawyers, Me David Lepidi, welcomed a “drastically reduced sentence” before announcing the star’s appeal to the Court of Cassation.
“Madame Adjani raised extremely serious legal arguments which were not heard by the court of appeal. (…) The fight continues,” he explained.
The 71-year-old artist was found guilty of having fictitiously domiciled in Portugal in 2016 and 2017, of having concealed a donation as a loan in 2013 and of transiting a sum via the United States in 2014.
Representatives of the General Directorate of Public Finances (DGFiP), complainants in this case, did not wish to make any comments following the deliberations.
An “ideal prey”
Absent from her first trial, the 5 César actress, dressed all in black, defended herself with passion on appeal. In a tirade at the bar, the star said she was “devoid” of any ability to “strategize” tax fraud: “I’m incapable of it, I don’t know how to count, I don’t care if I have anything.”
“I’ll be honest, I’ve never filled out a tax form. And fortunately, because it would have been disastrous,” she pleaded last April, denying being “a thief.”
The star, administrative phobic according to him, had denounced the actions of one of his tax advisors, who had promised to “put his affairs in order”.
“Falsely, like all the predators I have had the chance to meet on my way,” according to the actress, who considered herself “punished for having been robbed” and “guilty of being a victim.”
Not without emotion, she described herself at the bar as an “ideal prey”, “victim of successive scams” well beyond the tax framework.
The actress explained that she had been scammed by one of the managers of her company Isia Films and her ex-boyfriend – cited in the proceedings -, the doctor Stéphane Delajoux, accused at the bar of having “euthanized his mother”.
“You’re having bad luck,” the attorney general had whispered to him, who had become annoyed during a skirmish: “You keep your cinema for yourself.”
“Non-habitual residence”
One of Isabelle Adjani’s lawyers denounced her “lack of empathy”. The attorney general, already representing the public prosecutor at the first instance trial, had called for “total confirmation” of the previous judgment.
Living in Carcavelos, Portugal, Isabelle Adjani explained that she had “all her things” there, but without “being anchored” or “confined to residence”.
“It is obvious that she was a resident in France with a non-habitual residence in Portugal,” argued Mr. Ralph Boussier, the lawyer for the General Directorate of Public Finances (DGFiP), denouncing a “fictitious” domiciliation.
“You can climb trees and tear curtains, it doesn’t change anything,” he told the actress’s four new lawyers, specifying that she was not “an incredible fraudster.”
Regarding the 2 million euros paid by Mamadou Diagna Ndiaye, a businessman and friend of the actress, the actress also denied having sought to hide a “disguised donation” – in the words of the attorney general – to escape the transfer duties of 1.2 million euros.
The actress has already repaid 1.3 million euros, according to her lawyers.
The investigation into Isabelle Adjani was opened in 2016 after the appearance of her name in the Panama Papers, as the owner of a company in the British Virgin Islands.
The investigations did not lead to any prosecution on this aspect, but had uncovered other suspicions.
