Jean-Yves Le Drian summoned by Malian justice in an investigation for “damage to public property”


Tensions between Mali and France are not likely to ease, since the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, has been summoned by the Malian courts as part of an investigation for “damage to public property and other offences”.

According to a summons, authenticated to AFP, by the Malian justice, Jean-Yves Le Drian is “invited to appear at the office of an examining magistrate of the economic and financial pole, Monday June 20, 2022 for business concerning him”.

An invitation of which the Quai d’Orsay has not yet been informed, which has guaranteed “that no notification or information of any kind has reached them through the appropriate channels”.

This investigation follows a complaint filed since February 22 by the Maliko platform, which translates to “the Mali affair”, bringing together several Malian civil society organizations.

A history of biometric passports

As a reminder, in 2015, when Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was in power, a French company called Oberthur Technologie, which became Idemia in 2017, had obtained the market for the manufacture of Malian biometric passports for ten years.

Three months ago, the subject of this complaint therefore concerned “a story of the awarding of a market for the manufacture of Malian passports to a French company”, in which the son of Jean-Yves Le Drian was involved, like the underlined a Malian judicial source.

The Jeune Afrique media had also specified that Maliko had then “filed a complaint against Jean-Yves Le Drian and Thomas Le Drian for complicity in the illegal taking of interest and favouritism”.

“Le Drian was Minister of Defense at the time. Did he support the file to defend a French company or its interests?”, questions to which the Malian justice would like to provide precise answers in this file which is “only at the stage of the investigation”, has said another Malian judicial source.

For its part, the Maliko association, which has filed a civil action, shared a document accompanying the complaint and stipulating that “the procedures and rules established by Malian legislation, in particular the decree… on the market code public, were blithely violated when the aforementioned contract was awarded”.



Source link -80