This judicial sword of Damocles which weighs (once more) on François Bayrou | EUROtoday
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“IThey can attraction, it will not maintain any extra the second time than the primary, as a result of it isn’t true; The accusations towards me are fully unfounded. » It was final February 8… Three days after being exonerated within the affair of the MoDem parliamentary assistants, François Bayrou, who believed he had lastly gotten out of the authorized rut, suffered a Scottish bathe: the Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau had simply introduced in a press launch that she was interesting her acquittal.
“I’m not surprised, because I always expect the worst,” confided to Point the High Commissioner for Planning. “They found nothing in the first instance, because there is nothing. We will face it, with the same combativeness,” he added, not with out remorse, like a superb Béarnais peasant: “All this will cost and mobilize a considerable sum of money. »
ALSO READ Bayrou in Matignon, the revenge of the High Commissioner for PlanningHe even risked putting forward a figure: “Between 3 and 5 million euros in investigation, lawyer and procedural costs”, for a loss – disputed – estimated at 200,000 euros over fifteen years. “Do you realize, all that money? » he worried blandly.
Bayrou short-lived Minister of Justice
Did this call from the prosecutor constitute harassment in her eyes? The president of MoDem got away with a pirouette: “I don’t use words like that, but you have the right to think so,” he denounced with out seeming to take action. Before lamenting in a protracted sigh: “It’s been going on for seven years, seven years…”
Seven years is certainly a really very long time, and it isn’t over. Seven years since this affair of embezzlement of public funds has poisoned the lifetime of the brand new Prime Minister. Ephemeral Minister of Justice within the first authorities of Édouard Philippe, he needed to depart the Chancellery two months after being appointed there, in June 2017, below the “Balladur jurisprudence”, which requires – with none textual content imposes it – that an indicted minister resigns from his ministry. The opening of a judicial investigation, by which the mayor of Pau was focused, in addition to a number of different deputies from his motion, positioned him on the fringes of the Republic.
ALSO READ Philippe Lapousterle, the pondering head of François BayrouIn the sport with out actually being there attributable to his authorized troubles, François Bayrou thought he was out of the woods when, on February 5, the 11e felony chamber of the Paris judicial courtroom “dismissed him from the end of the prosecution”, releasing him, not like a number of different parliamentarians prosecuted and, themselves, convicted (Bernard Lehideux, Janelly Fourtou, Jean-Luc Bennahmias, and so on.). “He got through it, good for him. To tell you that my conviction does not bother me would be to lie. Twelve months suspended [30 000 euros d’amende et deux ans d’inéligibilité avec sursis]I find it completely crazy because my colleagues have worked,” feedback Jean-Luc Bennahmias, former MEP and former vice-president of MoDem. He additionally appealed.
The identical details as these accused of Marine Le Pen
Tried for “complicity by instigation of embezzlement of public funds”, the president of the MoDem was accused of getting organized a “system” of diverting a part of the envelopes usually meant to pay parliamentary assistants to pay political collaborators, serving of the centrist social gathering. The identical details as these which led to Marine Le Pen being judged extra lately – a sentence of 5 years in jail, three of which had been suspended, a advantageous of 300,000 euros and 5 years of ineligibility with provisional execution was required towards her on November 15.
The sanction demanded at his trial towards the Béarnais was much less extreme: thirty months of suspended jail time, a advantageous of 70,000 euros and three years of ineligibility, additionally suspended. At the tip of an indictment lasting greater than seven hours, the prosecutors estimated that François Bayrou had been “the main decision-maker” of a “system of embezzlement of European funds” for the advantage of his motion.
ALSO READ Bayrou affair: relaxed, attraction and ten der “He is experienced in political life and holds high the values of probity and exemplarity. He therefore knows perfectly well to what extent the embezzlements he orchestrates undermine the values he promotes,” the general public prosecutor reprimanded him, pointing to “an illicit modus operandi” justifying “a clear criminal response.”
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Kangaroo of the day
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The courtroom determined in any other case, contemplating that “there is no evidence to support the assertion that Mr. Bayrou was aware of the non-execution of the parliamentary assistance contracts”. The doubt ought to due to this fact profit the Béarnais. “It does not emerge from any document in the procedure or the debates that François Bayrou asked the five European deputies prosecuted to fictitiously employ parliamentary assistants […]. It is not established that[il] was complicit in the embezzlement of public funds committed by the five MEPs in question, by giving them instructions to this end,” the judgment states.
François Bayrou is not solely presumed harmless, he has been exonerated by the courts. But a sword of Damocles nonetheless hangs over his head. By submitting an attraction, the prosecution is relying on a second trial to convict him. The Paris Court of Appeal, which should retry him, has not but introduced the date of this “return match”.
https://www.lepoint.fr/politique/cette-epee-de-damocles-judiciaire-qui-pese-encore-sur-francois-bayrou-13-12-2024-2577915_20.php