The former deputy was found guilty of embezzlement of public funds for having paid nearly 40,000 euros in wages to his mother-in-law for a job deemed fictitious.
SourceAFP
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L’job of parliamentary assistant provided to his mother-in-law by Jean-Christophe Lagarde, between May 2009 and August 2010, was deemed “fictitious” by the Paris Criminal Court. Also, he sentenced the former deputy of the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) of Seine-Saint-Denis to ten months in prison suspended. The court thus decreed that the former centrist parliamentarian (2002-2022) was guilty of embezzlement of public funds for having paid Monique Escolier-Lavail, the mother of his wife, nearly 40,000 euros in salary in the under an “atypical, hidden” contract.
Judging that Jean-Christophe Lagarde “failed in the duty of exemplarity of an elected official” by “giving precedence to his personal interest over the common interest” with this fictitious job, the justice sentenced him to a fine of 60,000 euros and two years of ineligibility. He and his mother-in-law must also pay nearly 75,000 euros in damages to the National Assembly. Convicted of concealment, Monique Escolier-Lavail received a four-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 20,000 euros.
Calling for punishment for “unbearable facts for the social body”, the prosecution had requested a one-year suspended prison sentence and five years of deprivation of civil rights against the politician. Six months suspended sentence had been requested against his stepmother.
Jean-Christophe Lagarde had mentioned the needs of a book
At the October 3 hearing, the former MP tried to justify the “atypical” recruitment of his mother-in-law, a former SME manager, for the purposes of a book he said he was preparing on the difficulties of small business owners. in France and which never appeared. His mother-in-law, for her part, struggled to detail the content of her mission in the service of her son-in-law, evoking the “reading of newspapers” and some “informal conversations” with traders.
Although she lived in the Southwest, 600 kilometers from the National Assembly, she assured that she had devoted to this mission “five hours of work a day, seven days a week”, but the investigators had not found any trace from his work. According to his account, the computer where his newspaper clippings and observations were kept was damaged by the lightning that struck his house in 2017.
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The investigation was opened by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) in October 2017 after the complaint of an opposition councilor from the city of Drancy, in Seine-Saint-Denis, which Jean-Christophe Lagarde led for more than sixteen years.
“It’s an injustice because what the case has revealed is that there is no personal enrichment for Jean-Christophe Lagarde,” his lawyer told Agence France-Presse (AFP). , Yvon Goutal, after the reading of the judgment, announcing his intention to appeal.