Gerard Depardieu misses Paris drink-drive trial

Gerard Depardieu failed to face a Paris court today on a drink-driving charge but found time to appear at a football awards ceremony with Fifa president Sepp Blatter.

The 64-year-old French film star, who once admitted drinking six bottles of wine a day, is accused of being three times over the limit after crashing his scooter into a wall last year.

He was due before magistrates in Paris at 9.30am and could be summoned before the higher Correctional Court where the offence carries a maximum two-year prison sentence.

Depardieu was photographed with Blatter in Zurich at the football governing body’s Ballon d’Or award which was won by Barcelona’s Lionel Messi. He flew to Switzerland from Russia where he was granted Russian citizenship and a passport by Vladimir Putin.

The Cyrano de Bergerac star and the president were shown on state television shaking hands and hugging in the Black Sea resort of Sochi during what the Kremlin said was a private visit by the actor to Russia. Last month Depardieu announced his decision to leave France which would allow him to avoid to avoid a top tax rate of 75 per cent on anyone earning more than one million euros a year — £815,000.

The new tax on millionaires was deemed unconstitutional by France’s highest court but president Francois Hollande’s government intends to resubmit the law in a different form.

There was talk of Depardieu buying a new home, and even of becoming the culture minister in the Russian republic of Mordovia. He has also bought a house in Belgium.

But speaking in Zurich last night, Depardieu said: “I have a Russian passport, but I am French and will certainly have dual Belgian citizenship. But if I’d wanted to escape the taxman, as the French press says, I would have done it a long time ago.” He added he was a “citizen of the world”.

French prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has branded Depardieu’s conduct “pathetic” while France’s Left- wing press have attacked him for being unpatriotic.

It is not the first time that the volatile actor has found himself in trouble with the law. In August he was cautioned after punching a driver in a road rage incident in Paris, and in 2011 he tried to urinate in a bottle aboard a plane as it prepared to take off from Paris for Dublin.