Actress Monica Bellucci suspected of having secret Swiss accounts

Monica Bellucci poses during a photocall prior to the 23rd Lumieres awards ceremony in Paris in February this year Keystone

Switzerland’s supreme court will help French authorities over a case of suspected tax evasion involving Monica Bellucci, who acted in the last James Bond film, media reports say.

The Swiss Federal Court has agreed to a request for assistance by the French tax authorities for bank account information on financial assets held by Bellucci in Switzerland. 

The court’s judgement, revealed by the site Gotham CityExternal link on Thursday and reported in several media outlets, reveals that the 54-year-old Italian actress is suspected of tax evasion in France between 2011-2013. Bellucci had declared her fiscal residence to be London but the French authorities disagreed, as she was still with her now ex-husband Vincent Cassel at that point. It was also suspected that she had a secret account in Switzerland.

A Swiss fiscal investigation found a safe and several accounts in a Swiss bank, of which a part was said to be linked to a shell company in the British Virgin Islands, the Tages-Anzeiger reportedExternal link.

Bellucci has been in the tax crosshairs since 2014. In 2016 she applied successfully to the Federal Administrative Court to stop the transfer of her Swiss banking information to France. The Swiss tax authorities appealed this judgement. Bellucci then took the case to the Federal Court.

Bellucci’s French lawyer Marc Vaslin said that the French authorities never should have been allowed to start the proceedings. “It does not concern a person resident in France who is hiding money in Switzerland,” he was quoted in the Tages-Anzeiger as saying. Bellucci was not resident in France, he said.