The 53-year-old commercials producer is exiled to the UK. For organized money laundering, tax evasion and forgery, Laurent Zahut faces a sentence of up to ten years in prison. A rebound from the "Virus" case of laundering drug trafficking, judged in 2018, refers the producer of advertising films, Laurent Zahut, to the Paris Court of Appeal this Thursday, February 4, 2021. Nine years after his arrest, he incurs a sentence of up to ten years in prison for organized money laundering, tax evasion and forgery.
His case had been severed from the major drug money laundering “Virus” trial, in which around 40 people had appeared, in October 2018. Heavy prison sentences, totaling 91 years, had been handed down with fines from 18 million euros to more than 100 million.
This case reveals the secret links between drug traffickers and tax evaders. Laurent Zahut was indeed manager of the SARL Terre Neuve, specialized in the production of advertising films and beneficiary of a large contract with Walt Disney for the promotion of his cartoons in France. In front of the police, he admitted that the sum of the embezzlement is around 25 million euros.