Sarkozy latest wealthy Frenchman planning emigration to evade rich tax

Following in the footsteps of other high profile millionaires, Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, has been planning to emigrate to the UK and set up a £800 million equity fund.

Sarkozy and his third wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s plans to leave were discovered during a raid on their Paris mansion last year by fraud police investigating the ex-PM’s links to the Bettencourt election funding scandal. He is accused of corruption and of having used illegal funds for his 2007 election campaign.

More motivations for leaving, apart from escaping the controversial two-year 75 per cent rich tax, are other funding scandals linked to arms sales and the use of taxpayers’ money in the millions to pay colleagues to fake opinion polls, A recent report on the respected investigative news website Mediapart claims that an initial draft of Sarkozy’s migration and investment fund plans were discovered on his computer during the raid.

Since he was ousted as prime minister, Sarkozy has amassed a small fortune by charging £150,000 an hour for public speaking engagements, and is rumoured to be seeking private investments for his equity fund. However, due to the ongoing investigations, it’s likely that his proposed move to London may cause outrage plus a conflict of interest as a former French president should perhaps not choose London for a commercial venture.

The proposed private equity fund is expected to raise around 1 billion euros, aided by Sarkozy’s political advisor Alain Minc. Recently, Sarkozy is reported to have had meetings in Qatar and London with movers and shakers in the financial world, although his aides are playing down the Mediapart reports, attributing them to ‘intellectual constructs’.