Former French President, Nicolas Sarkozy may move to London to set up a billion pounds plus investment fund to escape a potential top tax rate of 75 per cent in his home country, a media report claimed today.
Details of the planned move were uncovered during a raid by fraud police on Sarkozy’s Paris mansion last June, the Daily mail reported.
Sarkozy 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.
But the former President is under investigation for corruption in France, and if he does cross the channel there will be outrage, the report said.
It came within weeks of Sarkozy losing his immunity against prosecution after being defeated by Socialist rival Francois Hollande in the May presidential election.
If Sarkozy moves to London, the controversial Frenchman will become the latest to escape a potential top tax rate of 75 per cent in his home country, it said.
The hugely respected investigative news site Mediapart has reported that the ‘first draft’ of Sarkozy’s London project was found by detectives examining his computer files.
A judge has since made Sarkozy an assisted witness in the so-called Bettencourt Affair, in which he is accused of using illegal cash from France’s richest woman to fund his 2007 election campaign.
Sarkozy is being investigated over numerous 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.