In this case already tried several times – in correctional, by the administrative court, the Council of State -, Franck Dumas, whose sentence cannot be adjusted because he resides abroad and who remains liable for 139,579 euros excluding sanctions , is therefore sentenced to one year in prison.
“The deliberate desire to evade his tax obligations, the absence of settlement of this debt for almost ten years, his presence abroad prohibiting any measure of forced execution” becomes “inevitable a prison sentence” can -we read in the decision of the Court of Appeal, consulted by AFP.
In 2015, the Treasury claimed in respect of income taxes for 2011 and 2012 the total sum of 535,472 euros from Mr. Dumas, “addicted to gambling and unable to pay his taxes” according to his own statements before the criminal court one year later.
Some 300,000 euros were recovered, but “never refunded”.
Franck Dumas, absent from the hearings since the first instance, disputes the taxable nature of a transactional indemnity of 430,000 euros given by SM Caen in 2012, the year the club sacked him after his relegation to Ligue 2.
“We will go to cassation,” his lawyer Philippe Veber told AFP, for whom “the intention to defraud the tax authorities is not characterized, there is no account abroad, no money hidden in a box”.
“My client required that the transactional indemnity was not taxable in the context of unfair dismissal,” said Me Veber.
Still according to his advice, Franck Dumas has been looking for a contract since the end of his collaboration in October 2022 with the Tout Puissant Mazembe club, based in Lubumbashi (Democratic Republic of Congo) where he resides.