Police claim a French tax inspector was slain during an audit at the residence of a used goods merchant.
Officers discovered the victim lying on the floor and his coworker handcuffed to a chair at the dealer’s home in the northern village of Bullecourt.
The 43-year-old tax inspector was likely slain by multiple stab wounds, according to prosecutors.
The dealer’s bullet-riddled body was recovered in an outlying structure. It is suspected that he shot himself.
According to Éric Bianchin, the mayor of Bullecourt, a 250-person village south-east of Arras, the 46-year-old businessman collected stuff from private homes and car-boot sales to resale them on his farm.
“I never had a problem with him,” the mayor told French media, adding that he had moved to the town four years earlier.
However, a difficulty occurred during his conversation with the tax office team who visited his home on Monday to audit his books.
Early Monday evening, after the alarm was raised “by a witness,” emergency personnel arrived to discover the inspector and farm owner dead.
“The country mourns one of its own,” Budget Minister Gabriel Attal said Tuesday after visiting the deceased inspector’s coworkers.
He described the death of a public servant “because he did his job” as “appalling.”
The colleague of the murder victim who survived is being hospitalized for shock.
