Gerard Depardieu offered tax asylum in Chechnya The actor has said he no longer wants to be French. He has since bought a property in Belgium, where taxes as lower. The French prime minister has described his move to avoid French tax rises as "pathetic." Earlier this week, Depardieu reportedly joked that he had received a Russian passport from Vladimir Putin. But the offer from Chechnya seems serious. "I can say for sure that we are ready to welcome the great artist," The Times reported Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov as saying to the RIA Novosti news agency. We will be glad to create conditions worthy of the great cultural figure in our republic. The star of Green Card is well known in the southern Russian republic, in October he attended Mr Kadyrov's birthday celebrations in Grozny.