Ex-French budget minister confirms foreign bank account

PARIS (Reuters) - France's former budget minister Jerome Cahuzac acknowledged on Tuesday that he had held a bank account abroad, two weeks after resigning over an inquiry into allegations that he had kept a secret Swiss bank account.

Mr Cahuzac, whose resignation was a major embarassment for the Socialist government, had until now denied a report by French investigative news website Mediapart that he held an undisclosed account at Swiss bank UBS until the start of 2010.

"I ask the President, the Prime Minister, my former colleagues in government, to forgive me for the damage I have caused them," Mr Cahuzac said on his blog, adding that he had some 600,000 euros (S$954,000) in a foreign bank account in his name for around 20 years.

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