PARIS (Reuters) – A French tax official cheated the government out of 600,000 euros (407,000 pounds) by creating a phantom identity as a university professor and claiming a salary for some 15 years, the government said on Monday. Education Ministry officials uncovered the scam in June and began legal and disciplinary action immediately, Budget Minister Eric Woerth said in a statement.He said he “desired action to be undertaken urgently to prevent a recurrence of an abuse of this kind.”
This tax official paid himself 40,000 euros ($54,568) a year for doing nothing, while unsuspecting innocent tax payers were paying for a professor who didn’t even exist. It sure took a LONG time to catch this 600,000 euro ($818,000) discrepancy. Congrats to Xavier Darcos, Minister of Education for being on the ball. What were the other education ministers DOING during those 15 years?? I WONDER.
Note: Maybe I missed it, but I didn’t hear about this story anywhere on the news here in France.
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you missed it indeed, it was all over the news…
The scandal does not lie so much with the ministry of education who could know of what was going on in this local branch of the finance office. It says a lot about the level of audit and control in government offices…
Comment by Alain Q. 08.29.07 @ 7:27 pmI mean ” could not know “…
Comment by Alain Q. 08.29.07 @ 7:28 pmI run into this “self-censorship” alot. Besides US news and the BBC, I’ve added Le Monde, Le Figaro, El Pais, and Radio Canada. I always find things noteworthy that do not receive adequate widespread coverage by the offended or embarrassed country. DRB
Comment by Donald Bearer 08.29.07 @ 7:36 pmreally, alain? i must’ve been in a cloud. i wonder if these kinds of things will be discovered now. there’s GOT to be hundreds of more cases of this type of abuse. (i’m thinking, anyway.)
donald, apparently this was in the news but i didn’t see it anywhere. there are definitely cases of censorship, but i think it’s probably worse in the u.s.
Comment by ptinfrance 08.30.07 @ 3:18 amYeah. It gets pretty silly sometimes. Hardly any mention of Sarkozy being here until only a day before he left. During Wimbledon, you had to wade through article after article about Venus Williams to get any info about Justine Henin. Bet the french media was torn with the ingrained feelings they have toward Les Belges, and their on-going dislike of the Americans. I feel right at home in France. Hope to get back soon. DRB
Comment by Donald Bearer 08.30.07 @ 9:12 pmI heard it on the radio too… on France Inter where you most likely will hear about things that are strangely not headlines in the other news media.
Comment by Carole 08.31.07 @ 11:13 amer, I’m not sure this has anything to do with Darcos. They found “le pot aux roses” because the university where she was supposed to work as a professor received her pay stub before she could catch it !
So Darcos doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that she was caught.
oh! ok, thank you sandrine. i guess the media decided to give the ministry of education credit.
Comment by ptinfrance 09.02.07 @ 1:27 amLeave a comment
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