Patrick Balkany

Patrick Balkany (born 16 August 1948 in Neuilly-sur-Seine) is a French politician.

He is a former member of the National Assembly of France. He was representing the 5th constituency of the Hauts-de-Seine department, and is a member of The Republicans. He served as mayor of Levallois-Perret, a wealthy suburb of Paris, since 1983, with his wife Isabelle as his deputy. He is also a long-time friend of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy. He is of Hungarian, Latvian and Ukrainian Jewish origin.

In 2019, he was sentenced for tax evasion to four years in prison and to ten years of disqualification, then dismissed from his mayor's mandate. Five months later he was released for health reasons. In February 2022, his sentence reverted to imprisonment due to multiple violations of his house arrest.

Youth

Family

Patrick Balkany is the son of Gyula Balkány, and Gisèle Frucht. His father was a Hungarian–Jewish immigrant who fled Hungary in 1937 to Belgium where, as soon as his country came under German occupation, he entered the French Resistance, where he specialised in forging papers. Gyula Balkány was arrested in Paris in 1941, and interned in Drancy internment camp An Auschwitz survivor, Balkany senior returned to Neuilly after the war; he bought and sold equipment that was too heavy for Americans to ship home, and invested his earnings in a line of women's clothing and a chain of luxury ready-to-wear stores. His mother Gisèle Frucht is the daughter of a family of Latvian and Ukrainian Jewish tailors.