Five people have been indicted in the case of the "102 gold bars" of the mayor of Puteaux (Hauts-de-Seine) Joëlle Ceccaldi-Raynaud, suspected in particular of having transmitted undeclared funds to her daughter, AFP learned Thursday from sources familiar with the matter.
The former deputy and mayor LR, who disputes the facts, has been indicted in this case since December 2020 for laundering aggravated tax fraud.
The new indictments, pronounced between April and August, target his children, Vincent Franchi and Emilie Franchi, and his son-in-law Vincent Laviec.
They also target Didier Ben Sadoun, account manager at the time of the events, and Olivier Ben Sadoun, former sports director at the town hall of Puteaux.
All are indicted for laundering tax evasion, some with aggravating circumstances such as the organized gang, sources close to the case told AFP, which the Nanterre prosecutor's office confirmed.
Emilie Franchi and Vincent Laviec are also suspected of tax evasion.
On an account in Luxembourg
Mrs Ceccaldi-Raynaud is notably accused of having transferred undeclared funds to her daughter to an account in Luxembourg, including 102 gold bars worth two million euros at the time and nearly 865,000 euros in cash.
According to the mayor, these ingots came from an inheritance from her Corsican grandmother.
For Baptiste de Fresse de Monval, lawyer for Mrs. Franchi and Mr. Laviec, his client "is the victim" and her husband "the turkey of the farce": the daughter of Mrs. Ceccaldi-Raynaud, "very young" at the time of the facts (about twenty years old) would have only obeyed her family, while her husband would have "discovered this affair when he married Emilie Franchi".
His clients “did everything to regularize” the situation.
The son, Vincent Franchi, current deputy mayor of Puteaux, was indicted in May for money laundering.
Denying, this departmental adviser assured AFP that he had only had a role of proxy for this account.
It was their grandfather, Charles Ceccaldi-Raynaud, former parliamentarian and figure of Puteaux, who died in 2019, who reported this famous account to justice in 2008.
He was then in conflict with his daughter Joëlle for the town hall.
Then in 2015, Mediapart revealed that this account, now in the name of Emilie Franchi, had been emptied in 2008. An investigation had been opened in 2016, entrusted to an investigating judge in 2019.
In 2021, Olivier Ben Sadoun, former sports director at the town hall, explained to Mediapart having transported part of the ingots and witnessed numerous withdrawals of money and their repatriation to France.
He was indicted last August.
In May 2022, his brother, Didier Ben Sadoun, account manager, was also indicted.
Their lawyer could not be reached.
