Snowden has left the airport....

[MADem]

73. Here are some dates for you...

January 03 2013 11:45 AM


The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, signed a decree on Thursday granting Russian citizenship to the movie star, according to the Kremlin website.

...Depardieu, who purchased a property in Néchin, Belgium, located just across the French border, late last year, reportedly still plans to settle there.

...In the unlikely event that Depardieu takes up Russian citizenship, he would be able to physically reside in Belgium.

Georges Dallemagne, head of Belgium's parliamentary committee that oversees naturalizations, told Reuters: "As a Russian he could certainly remain in Belgium, he would possibly need the necessary visas but for a short period he could stay here. He would need to request a residency permit for longer stays but as a Russian he should be able to get that. It depends on certain factors.”

http://www.ibtimes.com/gerard-depardieu-russia-love-991482

http://metro.co.uk/2013/01/07/gerard-depardieu-has-gaul-to-leave-new-homeland-after-just-24-hours-3342128/
Gérard Depardieu has gaul to leave new homeland after just 24 hours
Monday 7 Jan 2013 7:30 pm

Tax exile Gérard Depardieu’s stay in his newly adopted homeland of Russia has been brief. Just 24 hours to be precise.

On Sunday, the 64-year-old Astérix and Green Card star looked set to start a new life in the Russian republic of Mordovia.....He subsequently then flew to Russia, where he met president Vladimir Putin and received citizenship papers.

Depardieu had seemed pretty satisfied with his new home, saying at the time: ‘I am very happy, it’s very beautiful here – beautiful and soulful people live here.’

But in a move viewed as deeply cynical in France, he left the country for Switzerland on Sunday night.

He is attending Fifa’s golden ball award ceremony in Zurich with no sign he plans to return to Mordovia.

Gerard Depardieu says he remains French despite new Russian passport
Actor Gerard Depardieu has denied that he accepted a Russian passport to escape the taxman in France, and said that while he may also seek Belgian nationality, he is still French.
1:04AM GMT 08 Jan 2013
Depardieu's first public remarks since acquiring a Russian passport on Saturday suggest that his threat last month to turn in his French passport was a bluff.
"I have a Russian passport, but I remain French and I will probably have dual Belgian nationality," he said in the interview with the sports channel L'Equipe21. "But if I'd wanted to escape the taxman, as the French press says, I would have done it a long time ago."
Depardieu, 64, is one of France's best known actors, has appeared in more than 150 films and has an international following. He has been at the centre of a heated debate over tax exiles as France's Socialist government looks to boost revenue with a hefty tax on the rich. Depardieu drew scorn and insults with his recent decision to move to neighboring Belgium, where taxes are less steep for the well-off.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/9786779/Gerard-Depardieu-says-he-remains-French-despite-new-Russian-passport.html

FEBRUARY 25, 2013


Senesael drove to the area’s main attraction, a sprawling estate called Château Poullet. He had been keeping the location of Depardieu’s house a secret, but when he passed by a smaller mansion—it was beautiful, with a faded pink façade, covered with vines—he gave a wink.

“During the season, there’s a little tram that goes around the village,” he said. “We could name it the Depardieu. Hopefully, he will give us permission to show his house.” In the boucherie, where Depardieu had bought sausages when he visited, a newspaper clipping was taped to the cash register: “GÉGÉ PLANS A SUMMER BARBECUE.”

Depardieu had been lying low since his Russian escapades. A few days before I visited Néchin, his lawyer, Hervé Temime, had received me in a grand office on the Rue de Rivoli. Temime, who also represented Roman Polanski, sat at a desk, in front of spectacular windows framed by bright-yellow velour curtains. His printer was filled with bright-yellow paper. Depardieu, he said, had been wounded by the fracas. “He thinks that the public reactions are disproportionate. He did not commit any infraction, he did not do anything illegal, he is a free man.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/02/25/130225fa_fact_collins?printable=true¤tPage=all#ixzz2asK2

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BRUSSELS | Wed Mar 13, 2013 3:52pm IST
(Reuters) - Actor Gerard Depardieu, accused by the French government of trying to dodge taxes, has set up a company in neighboring Belgium where taxes on wealth are far lower than in his homeland.

Official documents filed on March 8 show that the star of the films "Cyrano de Bergerac" and "Asterix" had set up a firm that would invest in other companies.


http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/03/13/us-france-tax-depardieu-idINBRE92C0B520130313

5 April 2013

Gerard Depardieu skips drink driving court hearing in Paris AGAIN as he makes a new movie in New York
64-year-old French actor risks maximum two years in prison and £3,500 fine
He is charged with drink-driving after coming off scooter in Paris last year
Star is filming new role as IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2304397/Gerard-Depardieu-skips-Paris-court-hearing-drink-driving-charges-films-New-York.html#ixzz2asf8P4JW

Posted: June 16, 2013

French actor Gerard Depardieu, who famously pulled up stakes in his home country for Belgium because of high taxes, says he is now actually a “citizen of the world.” Despite his well-publicized row with politicians, in an interview with French media Depardieu, 64, claims that the French public still loves him and the feeling is mutual. The French citizenry hold him in high regard, he claimed, because he’s “a rebel … who is sometimes drunk.” That same “hooligan” reputation is what caught the attention of Vladimir Putin, Depardieu suggested, who earlier this year issued the actor a Russian passport. The Cyrano de Bergerac star said he wants to acquire seven passports before all is said and done to help him avoid needing visas. In the meantime, as a part-time resident of France, he claims that he still coughs up 30 percent of his income in French taxes and that he is not a tax exile. That withstanding, he deemed France “almost a Bolshevik country” in part because of the scandal involving France’s ex-Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac who was charged with fraud after it was discovered that he held a secret Swiss bank account. He even claimed that Russia enjoys a news media that is more free than its counterpart in France. The actor denied ever officially seeking citizenship in Belgium, however, but that he “was pushed (into becoming a semi-expatriate)” by high taxes. Depardieu added that “I know that I love the French people and that I have never left them. I was born here with nothing and for the last 30 years I have employed 100 people.”
Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/763405/gerard-depardieu-says-hes-a-citizen-of-the-world/#Wd6x2reoQtOFduF1.99

Published June 21, 2013AFP

The star announced in November he was moving abroad after President Francois Hollande's Socialist government sought to impose a 75 percent tax rate on annual incomes over one million euros.

He took up residency in Belgium and was granted Russian citizenship by President Vladimir Putin. The decision sparked controversy, as have his friendships with Putin and Chechnya's strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

Depardieu recently told a French newspaper he considered himself a "citizen of the world" and said he was also applying for an Algerian passport. He said he hoped eventually to have citizenship in seven countries.

In August, he was cautioned after punching a motorist who had forced him to swerve on his scooter, and in 2011 he generated global headlines when he tried to urinate in a bottle aboard a plane as it prepared to take off from Paris for Dublin.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/06/21/depardieu-fined-has-licence-suspended-over-drink-driving/#ixzz2asSoE9cB

Published: 26 Jul 2013 10:42 GMT+02:00 | Print version
France, a “champion of taxation” the study says, takes on average 56.61 percent of a French person’s salary in 2013.

This means the equivalent of months of earnings going straight into state coffers – or to be precise everyday up until Friday July 26th.

In calendar terms only the Belgians have to work longer in the year to pay off the tax man with their liberation day set for August 8th.

That might make interesting reading for actor and self-confessed tax avoider Gérard Depardieu who recently bought a house in Belgium so he could be out of reach of the French tax man.

http://www.thelocal.fr/20130726/french-celebrate-liberation-from-tax-man

The only time he's in Russia is when he's working on films or commercials. Otherwise, he's elsewhere. That's why he stays in hotels (aside from the fact that the apartment he was given way out in the boonies suffered smoke damage when a neighboring building went up in flames).

24 June 2013
He has been banned from driving for six months in his native France after falling off his scooter while drunk last autumn.
But just days later cinema star Gerard Depardieu was spotted zipping around on a mini-scooter outside his hotel in Russia.
The 64-year-old actor, who is in Moscow filming, was disqualified from driving in France last week after falling from his scooter last November then being taken to a police station drunk.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2347531/Gerard-Depardieu-zips-mini-scooter-Russia.html#ixzz2aslI6bPw