The drunk driver, cook at the Chinese embassy, takes refuge behind his diplomatic immunity. The victim is threatened with deportation.
By Lise Lacombe for Le Point
© ADRIEN FILLON / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP
Published on
En May in Paris, a 30-year-old delivery man was the victim of a road accident. At the wheel, a drunken driver, kitchen employee of the Chinese Embassy. While the latter was released without further action, the undocumented delivery man, injured in the accident, lost everything: his scooter, his job, and risks expulsion, as the story goes. The Parisian.
Kamel, a taxi driver, witnessed the events on his way home from work. A month ago, on Avenue Bosquet in Paris, a stone’s throw from the Chinese Embassy, a driver hit a man on a scooter head-on.
The witness tells the Parisian having seen the car with the diplomatic plates “restart with a bang” at a green light before losing control. The driver “smashed the traffic light, turned like a top, rolled over and, in his path, threw the delivery man on his scooter with his Uber Eats bag”, says Kamel, who rushes to help him.
The driver tries to escape
Injured, the driver of the scooter refuses to call for help because “he had no security”. Arrived on the spot, the firefighters persuaded him to go to the hospital. Barely out of the health facility, this undocumented Filipino delivery man was summoned by investigators last week and is under an obligation to leave the territory (OQTF).
Serious consequences for the victim of the accident, while the driver brandished his diplomatic immunity. At the time of the accident, this kitchen worker from the Chinese Embassy had tried to flee. Kamel, who came to his aid, remembers that the inside of the car “reeked of alcohol” and that the driver’s “first instinct” was to “take his bag and leave”. But the witness of the accident held him by force while waiting for the police.
According to a police source, a representative of the Chinese Embassy is traveling to meet the man who will need two hours to agree to submit to an alcohol test. A police officer present explains: “He was more than 0.56 [g/litre de sang]. This suggests the rate at the time of the shock, two hours earlier. Despite everything, the man had been able to leave free because of his diplomatic immunity.
powerless justice
A source at the Interior Ministry, quoted by The Parisian, regrets the impotence of the magistrates. In diplomatic immunity cases, “most of the time, they don’t even have the right to hear the suspects”. A magistrate can still take the decision to prosecute the author of an accident, according to “the country concerned” and “the degree of immunity enjoyed by the driver”.
The Chinese Embassy, questioned on Twitter by Kamel, the “rebellious” witness to the accident, did not wish to speak. She claims to have no “information on the case”.
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For its part, Uber claims that the delivery person does not work for the platform. The spokesperson explains that he checked all the races in the sector at the time of the accident, but that none “arrived at their destination”. The meal delivery service raises the possibility of independent delivery people “using Uber bags” to work for other platforms.
The Filipino delivery man is currently unreachable, specify our colleagues, preferring to remain anonymous. The case, which is still ongoing, has been entrusted to the judicial accident processing service (STJA) of the Paris police headquarters.