It is a postcard town made up of colorful squares and streets lined with lemon trees that will flow into the sea. But the Mentonnais quickly put an end to the reverie: ” This is Dallas. ” Since mid-November, half a dozen complaints about the town hall of Menton have landed on the office of the public prosecutor’s office in Nice.
Yves Juhel, the new mayor after the sudden death, on October 25, of Jean-Claude Guibal (80), first filed a complaint for the theft and destruction of documents: nearly 600 kg of paper were allegedly stolen from the town hall and then burnt at the municipal waste collection center. Closely followed by a second complaint after the discovery of an email spy system in place at Town Hall.
“It feels like a movie. A mafia western. »An employee of the town hall
“All e-mails sent and received by elected officials were redirected to an office which was no doubt to read them”, says a source familiar with the matter. Opposite, the “Guibal clan”, as the Mentonnais call it, responds by increasing the number of defamation complaints. In the maze of hallways of the town hall, under the imposing frescoes by Jean Cocteau and the leopard carpets, a town hall employee smiles: ” It feels like a movie. A mafia western. “
A family matter
With the Guibals, politics has always been a family affair: Jean-Claude, baron of Riviera politics, mayor of the city for thirty-two years and deputy, UMP then Les Républicains, from 1997 to 2017, was married to Colette Giudicelli, LR Senator of the Alpes-Maritimes, also deceased. They called themselves “the Thenardiers of the French Riviera”. It is precisely their clan who is targeted by the preliminary investigation, opened in June, by the Nice prosecutor’s office for, among other charges, “corruption”, “illegal taking of interest” and “embezzlement of public funds”.
In July, the Nice judicial police carried out numerous searches, from the town hall to the home of Jean-Claude Guibal himself, in the early hours of the morning, when he was just recovering from a health problem. At the heart of the investigation, a way “More than doubtful” to manage municipal affairs, according to the court record.
Until 2017, it was Jean-Claude Guibal’s daughter-in-law, Céline Giudicelli, who held the office of chief of staff. But after the vote of the law known as “of confidence in political life”, in 2017, which notably prohibits family jobs, she was appointed general manager of the local public company (SPL) Ports de Menton, whose main shareholder is the municipality. It was to this company that the town had outsourced coastal management, which includes, among other things, major works and beach concessions. “A very, very juicy market”, summarizes a judicial source.
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