Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke arrives at the Paris financial center on March 22, 2007 (AFP / THOMAS COEX)
Few investigating judges have accumulated as many sensitive cases as Renaud Van Ruymbeke, who died at the age of 71, hardened by complex cases, dirty tricks and the vindictiveness of politicians from all sides who forged his visceral attachment to independence of Justice.
Karachi, Kerviel, Taiwan frigates, Cahuzac, Elf, Urba, Boulin… So many ultra-media political-financial soap operas for an obsessively discreet magistrate, who retired in 2019.
Pillar of the financial center of Paris in the years 2000 and 2010, Renaud Van Ruymbeke was first of all precision mechanics, associated with the endurance and strategy of an ex-footballer, who watched for the right moment to reach his target.
“Poor lonesome JI” (Poor lonely investigating judge), proclaimed a poster bearing the image of Lucky Luke in his advisor’s office at the Rennes Court of Appeal.
Judge Renaud van Ruymbeke refuses to respond to journalists about the suicide letter from Minister of Labor Robert Boulin sent to AFP on October 31, 1979 in Caen (AFP / MYCHELE DANIAU)
It was there that in the early 1990s he inherited the delicate Urba-Sages file on the financing of the Socialist Party and organized a surprise search of the PS headquarters, before indicting the ex-treasurer of the party, then President of the National Assembly, Henri Emmanuelli.
He then became a bête noire of the Mitterrand era. “You remind us of the special sections at Vichy,” they say to him on rue de Solférino. “I’m just doing my job,” replies this son of a high-ranking official.
From his beginnings in Caen, this magistrate with a slender silhouette, wearing a mustache and thin glasses, had clashed with power, at the time the Giscardian right.
He was then investigating a case marked by the suicide in 1979 of Labor Minister Robert Boulin who had accused him of having wanted to “make a hit on a minister”.
– “Vaccinated for the future” –
“It in a way inoculated me for the future,” confided Renaud Van Ruymbeke to the authors of the book “Sarko m’a lire”.
Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke arrives at the Paris courthouse for the trial of the so-called “Clearstream” case, October 6, 2009 (AFP / Martin BUREAU)
From 2010, he had investigated another fire: the financial aspect of the Karachi file on suspicions of illicit financing of the campaign of Edouard Balladur, of which Nicolas Sarkozy was the spokesperson in 1995.
His path had also crossed that of the former President of the Republic in another resounding affair, Clearstream, the scene of violent clashes between Mr. Sarkozy and Dominique de Villepin.
Mr. Van Ruymbeke had been a collateral victim of this procedure: for several years, he had been under the threat of disciplinary proceedings, initiated because he had spoken outside the minutes to the raven of the affair, Jean-Louis Gergorin.
Recklessness? Naivety? The case was perplexing as this magistrate was so experienced, used to traps and conflicts with the prosecution.
He defended himself by invoking “respect for the word given” to an informant, above all considering himself the victim of “an attempt at destabilization”.
He had already suffered several attacks from Nicolas Sarkozy, considering himself tarnished in the Clearstream affair by a “crow allied with a judge”.
“I am not at war with anyone, neither Nicolas Sarkozy, nor anyone else,” assured in return the magistrate, who shared with the former head of state a passion for football.
Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke (l) leaves the Paris courthouse after a hearing implicating former President Nicolas Sarkozy in a campaign financing scandal, April 1, 2015 (AFP / Martin BUREAU)
“With age, we become armored. I have always been on the wrong side,” he said, a bit fatalistic, in front of Parisian students at the end of 2011, noting that a judge “has the possibility of saying no” but will have to maybe give up on a career.
In 1996, he participated in the crusade against dirty money laundering launched by the “Geneva Call”.
Since then, the trader Jérôme Kerviel had appeared in his office, who criticized him for his “blindness” in the face of accusations from Société Générale, or the Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine who accused him of “misuse of procedure” in the Karachi file.
Jérôme Cahuzac, Minister of the Budget, author of tax evasion, and the Balkany couple had also had dealings with the magistrate.
“I protect myself,” he confides. And it was near Rennes that this father of seven children immersed himself in peace, far from the twists and turns of hidden financial circuits, cultivated his garden and rediscovered his piano, his other passion.