However, the investigative newspaper, Le Canard Enchainé reports that Mr Hollande saw evidence pointing to Mr Cahuzac's possible guilt as long ago as December. Mr Cahuzac, 60, previously a highly paid plastic surgeon, was fired by the Elysée last month after the state prosecutor announced that the voice in a recorded telephone conversation from 2000, admitting ownership of an illegal, Swiss account, appeared to be the minister. At the time, Mr Cahuzac dismissed the allegations as "crazy" and told the National Assembly he had "never, ever" had a foreign bank account. After months of denials, he yesterday made a double confession: publicly in his blog and privately, to two magistrates. "I was stuck in spiral of lies," he wrote. I fought a terrible internal battle to try to resolve the conflict between my duty to tell the truth and my desire to fulfil the mission with which I had been entrusted. Le Canard now alleges, citing police and political sources, that Mr Hollande was informed by his interior minister in December that the voice on the tax fraud recording was "likely" that of Mr Cahuzac. Edwy Plenel, head of Mediapart, the investigative website that broke the story in December, said Mr Hollande "has no excuse" for reacting so slowly to the scandal. " (He) knew full well what everyone knew," he said. It had been unclear what had pushed Mr Cahuzac to go public on his secret account. Today, however, Swiss daily Le Temps said he was forced into doing so as a probe by Swiss justice officials at two banks, UBS and Reyl et Cie, confirmed that he had indeed held an account at both. According to French media, Mr Cahuzac opened an account at UBS in the early 1990s, and closed it in 2000, transferring his funds to Reyl et Cie, which focuses on clients who are not Swiss residents. In 2010, he allegedly transferred his money from Reyl et Cie's Geneva branch to one on Singapore. He faces a maximum prison terms of five years in prison for "laundering the proceeds of tax fraud," suggesting he had spent some of the money held in the offshore account.