L’Former Interior Minister Claude Guéant, 77, has been granted conditional release and is due to leave Health prison on Wednesday, his lawyer told Agence France-Presse on Monday.
The former director general of the national police, who was also secretary general of the Elysée under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, had been imprisoned since December 13. Justice had estimated that he did not pay on time the sums he had been ordered to pay in 2017 in the case of cash bonuses from the Ministry of the Interior.
A few days after being imprisoned, Claude Guéant had made a request for sentence adjustment, examined a month later, on January 19, by a sentence enforcement judge, who had reserved his decision. On Monday, the judge decided to authorize the release of the former senior state clerk, without an electronic bracelet, from Wednesday, according to Mand Philippe Bouchez El-Ghozi.
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A “triple pathology” mentioned
In January, the lawyer had argued that his client had “completely paid” his debt to the public treasury via loans granted by his relatives and that in prison, his “health situation [ne pouvait] only to deteriorate, in view of the triple pathology” from which he suffers. The prosecution issued a favorable opinion on his requests. Claude Guéant was sentenced in January 2017, on appeal, in the case of cash bonuses from the Ministry of the Interior, for complicity in the embezzlement of public funds and concealment, to two years in prison, including one year suspended probation. , and a fine of 75,000 euros.
He was also ordered, jointly with four other defendants, to pay 210,000 euros in damages to the State. This sanction became final in 2019 with the rejection of his cassation appeal. Initially, Claude Guéant served this sentence under the conditional release regime, but on November 9, 2021, the sentencing chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal revoked part of his suspended sentence and his parole, resulting in his incarceration a month later.
In another case, that of the Élysée polls, he was sentenced on January 21, in his absence, to one year’s imprisonment, including eight months, for favoritism, with a deferred deposit warrant. After his release on Wednesday, however, he will not return to prison for this last sentence: he has indeed appealed, which suspends the application of this sanction until a second trial.
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