Five months in jail, then ten months at home with an ankle bracelet. By the prosecutor’s count, that left Patrick Balkany with more than half of a three-year sentence still to serve. On Monday 7 February 2022 he went back to prison.
The 73-year-old former Les Républicains mayor of Levallois-Perret arrived by car at Fleury-Mérogis prison, south of Paris, shortly after 1:30 p.m., AFP journalists on the spot reported, as relayed by La Croix. Earlier that day, Evreux public prosecutor Dominique Puechmaille announced the incarceration in front of the Vexin-sur-Epte gendarmerie, where she had summoned him. He had been under house arrest since March 2021 at the Cossy mill in Giverny with his wife Isabelle.
How the bracelet ended
The couple’s electronic tagging was revoked by a sentence-enforcement court in Evreux in December, after repeated breaches of their obligations, including the payment of their debts. About a hundred “incidents” had set off the bracelets. The Rouen appeals court confirmed the revocation on Thursday 3 February. It found that the Balkanys had “never accepted the constraints” of home detention under electronic monitoring, citing their “vehement or ironic, sometimes outrageous” attitude toward prison staff and the judge.
The money was the heart of it. The couple owes the tax authority 5,3 millions d’euros, plus 766.759 euros owed by Isabelle Balkany alone. The court noted that they had “very comfortable” income of more than 12.000 euros a month and could have cut their spending to pay. Puechmaille said the payments made so far added up to around 2.000 euros. She spoke of “a total absence of efforts” to clear the debt behind the conviction.
“They spent their time playing with fire,” she told AFP on Friday.
The defence objects
Balkany’s lawyer, Romain Dieudonné, argued on BFMTV that he should not be sent back. He pointed to a medical certificate the defence had supplied to show that Balkany’s health was incompatible with detention. Fleury-Mérogis, he said, is “unquestionably a harder prison than La Santé” and “felt as an additional penalty.” The bracelet was due to end on 10 March 2022, a few weeks away, he added: “we could have waited a little.”
Puechmaille said the court acted “with full knowledge” and that the prison administration proposed Fleury-Mérogis because it offers 24-hour medical follow-up. “Patrick Balkany, like any offender, must serve his sentence,” she said.
Isabelle Balkany, 74, has been in hospital since Thursday after a suicide attempt. Her bracelet placement was also revoked, but the prosecutor said her case would be settled later.
Balkany had first entered La Santé prison on 13 September 2019, the day of his first-instance conviction for tax fraud, and was released on 12 February 2020 for health reasons under light judicial supervision. The couple’s conviction was upheld on appeal on 4 March 2020, with a three-year prison term.
