Eleven executives, including Bayrou, are sent back to correctional, in the case of alleged irregular jobs also targeting LFI and the RN.
It is a court decision that weakens one of the main figures of the Macron camp. François Bayrou and ten other centrist officials were sent back to the criminal court on Thursday, a new milestone in the case of the alleged irregular jobs of assistants to MEPs from the Democratic Movement (MoDem). Two similar investigations, still in progress, target La France insoumise (LFI) and the National Rally (RN).
Six years after the opening of a preliminary investigation, the people implicated on Thursday are accused of having used funds from the European Parliament, in order to pay employees actually working for the training chaired by François Bayrou. ” Parliamentary assistants worked for the benefit of the centrist party while being paid by the European Parliament “Write the two investigating judges in their order for dismissal, revealed by AFP. The damage estimated for the European Parliament amounts to 1.4 million euros.
This awaited trial at the Paris Criminal Court, for “embezzlement of public funds”, complicity or concealment of this offense, concerns in particular the former Keeper of the Seals, Michel Mercier, and the former MEP, Jean-Luc Bennahmias. But also the MoDem parties and its predecessor UDF, as legal persons.
Investigation opened in 2017
The alleged offenses – believed to span a period from June 2005 to January 2017 – have ” benefited to the two formations by reducing their payroll, believe the instructing magistrates. But, according to them, they did not produce “personal enrichment of deputies or party officials “. A dismissal was ordered for the former MEPs, Sylvie Goulard and Nathalie Griesbeck, as well as for the MoDem MP Maud Gatel, parliamentary assistant until 2009 of Marielle de Sarnez – who died in January 2021.
In the order for reference, François Bayrou, also mayor of Pau (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) and High Commissioner for Planning, is presented as “the decision-maker and person responsible for setting up and operating the fraudulent system“. Five members of the UDF and MoDem governance are described as “accomplices of embezzlement “.
Read alsoAssistants to MoDem MEPs: François Bayrou denounces a “political battle”
As for the five former MEPs implicated, they are identified as “the vectors of these misappropriations, through the fictitious employment of parliamentary assistants for the exclusive benefit of the political party “. “François Bayrou has already demonstrated that there was no fictitious job” indicates toFigaro his lawyer, Maître Pierre Casanova.“He will now demonstrate that no European funds have benefited his movement “. “We have never used these methods“, assured François Bayrou at the beginning of February on BFMTV.
The case had had an important echo as soon as the announcement of the opening of a preliminary investigation, in June 2017, with the resignation of the government of François Bayrou (Justice), Sylvie Goulard (Armies) and Marielle de Sarnez (European Affairs ). Starting point for the investigations, an anonymous denunciation led to an investigation by the European Anti-Fraud Office (Olaf), from 2014, on the parliamentary assistants of MEPs from the National Front (FN, today RN). A former FN MEP, Sophie Montel, then denounced in March 2017 the fictitious jobs of collaborators of nineteen of her colleagues from several parties, including the MoDem and LFI.
Since the start of the affair, François Bayrou has constantly denounced a “political battle» launched by «political opponents“. He knows that this affair is likely to affect his presidential ambitions deemed intact, after three attempts to conquer the Elysée.
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