Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday granted citizenship to Gerard Depardieu after the disgruntled French film star said he was quitting his homeland to avoid paying a new millionaires’ tax.
The decision appears to give Depardieu – a frequent guest of the Moscow celebrity circuit who nonetheless has never asked for nationality – the right to pay the 13 per cent tax levied in Russia on everyone from tycoons to the poor.
“Vladimir Putin has signed a decree granting Russian citizenship to France’s Gerard Depardieu,” the Kremlin said in a statement.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Depardieu was being rewarded “for his contribution to Russian culture and cinema”.
But the announcement looked more like a jab at the West by Putin – keen to show off Russia’s more business-friendly approach to taxes – than an actual effort to lure one of the world’s biggest celebrities to Moscow.
French Government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said the decision was the “exclusive prerogative of the Russian head of state” and did not merit further comment.
Depardieu said on Sunday that a move by France’s Constitutional Council to strike down the proposed 75 per cent tax rate for millionaires changed nothing in his much debated decision to move out of France.
The French Socialist Government has vowed to push ahead with the tax – applicable to anyone who makes more than one million euro a year – and propose a new measure that would conform with the Constitution.
Putin at his end-of-year press conference in December surprised many by saying he was ready to offer the 64-year-old cinema veteran a Russian passport to resolve the row.
“If Gerard really wants to have a residency permit in Russia or a Russian passport, we can consider this issue resolved positively,” Putin said at the time.
Putin added that the French premier’s famous remark about Depardieu being “pathetic” for threatening to leave the country had hurt the star’s feelings and may eventually force him to move.
“An artist is easy to offend,” Putin remarked.
Depardieu will qualify for the 13 per cent tax rate if he spends at least six months out of the year in Russia. The annual tax rate will go up to 30 per cent on all income made locally and in other countries if he spends more than half the year abroad.
“People in the West do not know the details of our tax system,” senior Cabinet member Dmitry Rogozin tweeted yesterday.