Depardieu ‘giving up’ his French passport

AFP/Paris

France’s leading actor Gerard Depardieu said yesterday that he is giving up his French passport after the prime minister called him “pathetic” for seeking to avoid taxes by moving to Belgium.

In an open letter to Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, the 63-year-old Cyrano de Bergerac and Green Card film star said that he had been treated unfairly after years of supporting France and paying millions of euros in taxes.

“I am not asking to be approved of, but I could at least be respected. All of those who have left France have not been insulted as I have been,” he said in the letter published in newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.

Depardieu has joined some of France’s wealthiest business figures in Belgium following moves by President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government to tax annual incomes above 1mn euros ($1.3mn) at 75%.

In the letter, Depardieu, who has extensive business interests including wine estates and three Paris restaurants, accused the Socialists of driving France’s most talented figures out of the country.

“I am leaving because you consider that success, creation, talent, anything different, must be punished,” he said.

Depardieu said that over 45 years of working and running businesses in France he had paid 145mn euros to state coffers.

“At no time have I failed in my duties. The historic films in which I took part bear witness to my love of France and its history,” Depardieu said.

Ayrault’s comments this week came after it emerged that Depardieu had taken up residence in Nechin, a tiny village just over the border in Belgium, which is a favoured spot for wealthy French nationals avoiding tax.

“I find it quite pathetic,” Ayrault had said. “Everyone loves him as an artist but paying your taxes is an act of solidarity and patriotism.”