A former budget minister, who championed France’s campaign against tax dodgers, was sentenced to three years in jail on Thursday for tax fraud and money laundering.

Jerome Cahuzac, 63, a plastic surgeon by trade, was forced to quit Socialist President Francois Hollande’s government in March 2013, over the discovery that he owned a secret bank account abroad.

His downfall cast a pall over Hollande’s government in its first year, all the more so because Cahuzac had stood up in parliament in December 2012 to declare: “I do not and never had a foreign bank account, neither now nor before”.

His ex-wife Patricia has been jailed for two years.