The Latest Evader Of The French Millionaire Tax: Former President Nicolas Sarkozy!

The Latest Evader Of The French Millionaire Tax: The Former French President (ZeroHedge, Jan 23, 2013):

That even former French president Nicolas Sarkozy plans to start a £1 billion private equity fund in London is not news: courtesy of ZIRP and the ongoing global reliquifiication of markets by every central bank as currency warfare goes ballistic, one would have to be seriously unlucky to chase the central planner inflated beta rally and not succeed (one would also have to be very unaware of the difference between nominal and real returns, but since that is most people these days, let’s ignore that). What is news, is that as part of said transfer to the “asset management business” it is none other than the former French president who is next in line to evade Hollande’s millionaire tax by crossing the Channel, and “redomiciling” himself in London.

From The Mail:

Nicolas Sarkozy is preparing to move to London to set up a billion pounds plus investment fund, it was claimed today.

If the move goes ahead, the controversial Frenchman will become the latest to escape a potential top tax rate of 75 per cent in his home country.

He and his former supermodel third wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy would be likely to settle in an affluent district like South Kensington – so becoming the most high profile Gallic celebrity couple in the city.

However, unlike Obelix, Sarko has other motives to expatriate than just avoiding the direct consequences of his socialist successor’s “fairness doctrine” digging deep into his pocket.

But the former president is under investigation for corruption in France, and if he does cross the Channel there will be outrage.

Details of the planned move were uncovered during a raid by fraud police on Sarkozy’s Paris mansion last June.

Mr Sarkozy is said to have taken the money from Liliane Bettencourt, the I’ Oreal heiress – a claim the politician denies, but for which he could still receive a prison sentence.

He is also being investigated over numerous other funding scandals, including one linked to arms sales to Pakistan, and another in which he is said to have used millions in taxpayers’ money to pay friends to produce opinion polls while he was in office.

Mediapart suggests that the planned London move would create a ‘conflict of interest’ – not only because Sarkozy is being investigated, but because a former French president should not choose the UK as a base to make his fortune.

Maybe. But what it will certainly create is even more bread and circuses: after all the primary goal of the ruling kleptocracy is to keep the peasantry distracted from learning the one key abovementioned distinction: that between nominal and real, a distinction which everyone will soon have no choice but to learn when the realization comes that a record high in the Russell even as the global economy is flatlining at best and continues to deteriorate at worst, is not due to such concepts as a “free lunch.”


Artist’s impression of Sarko running away from taxes, criminal allegations and/or other noxious stimuli.



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