French ex-Budget Minister Gets 3-Year Sentence for Tax Fraud

Former French budget minister Jerome Cahuzac, whose brief in government was to crack down on tax dodgers, was sentenced to three years in prison on Thursday for tax fraud and money laundering.

Cahuzac's ex-wife Patricia Menard was given a two-year sentence for her role in stashing millions of euros abroad from the couple's lucrative hair transplant business.

The Paris court also gave Francois Reyl, a Swiss banker, a one-year suspended prison sentence and fined him 375,000 euros ($405,000) for assisting the couple.

His bank, Reyl, was fined 1.87 million euros.

Cahuzac, a 64-year-old trained plastic surgeon, had admitted in evidence that he hid funds offshore to maintain his family's standard of living -- which included buying apartments for the children in London and Paris and paying for holidays in Mauritius.

The scandal was the first of a series that tarnished Francois Hollande's presidency and prompted him to order his ministers to disclose their personal wealth, a first in France, where the wealth of public officials had long been considered a private matter.